The US Department of Justice has charged two senior Patterson Unified School District employees with illegal cryptocurrency mining at ten local schools..
According to prosecutors, school district assistant superintendent Jeffrey Menge and IT director Eric Drabert purchased high-performance video cards for mining.. In addition, violators used school equipment and other resources to equip their farms, including illegally consuming electricity, greatly increasing the schools' electricity costs.
School employees transferred the income received from the sold cryptocurrencies to their cryptocurrency addresses.. In addition to illegal mining, the Ministry of Justice accused the men of fraud and theft of money.. As part of this scheme, Menge embezzled between $1 million and $1.5 million, and Drabert stole between $250,000 and $300,000. This further aggravated the legal problems faced by the accused..
The names of cryptocurrencies illegally mined on school premises are not disclosed. However, when it comes to underground mining, the most commonly mined in the US are BTC, Monero (XMR), Ravencoin (RVN) and Dogecoin (DOGE).
This incident occurred against the backdrop of pressure from American authorities on cryptocurrency miners. On February 1, the US Department of Energy required miners to report six months of energy consumption. According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), cryptocurrency miners accounted for between 0.6% and 2.3% of all US energy consumption.
The EIA plans to conduct a study to measure the electricity consumption of local mining companies. Miners will be required to have detailed information about their energy consumption, making it easier for the agency to monitor energy-intensive operations.