Man who sought to ‘mine’ lucrative Bitcoins is caught out by his pure greed
ACTIVITY IS LEGAL, BUT BYPASSING ELECTRICAL MAINS TO FUND IT ENDS IN PRISON
A greedy cryptocurrency trader has been jailed after he was caught bypassing electrical mains to power the machines he used for his financial dealings.
Sanjay Singh, 40, admitted abstracting electricity worth up to £32,000 at two Leicestershire sites where he operated bitcoin mining machines, Leicester Crown Court heard.
The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is completely virtual. People can send and receive Bitcoins to digital wallets.
One of Singh’s sites was in an industrial unit in Coalville, while the other was in Firefly nightclub in Loughborough, which was closed for the summer holidays at the time.
Singh’s activities were first detected when a power provider investigated a fault at a substation caused by the cryptocurrency mining overloading the system, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
The CPS released details of the case and said an inspection of Singh’s premises showed he had tampered with the wiring to run more than 200 devices from wiring diverted from the mains supply to an unmetered fuse box.
Investigations suggested he had cheated the power provider out of tens out thousands of pounds of revenue from electricity.
While the offence at the industrial unit was under investigation, Singh went on to commit the same offence at the nightclub in Loughborough.
Bitcoin mining, in its most basic form, is discovering and adding more bitcoins to the digital currency ecosystem.
This is done by using computers which generate bitcoins in a process called mining – where a computer calculates complex mathematical equations – and can be done any time of the day.
Bitcoin miners are rewarded for every “block” they complete, with one entire bitcoin currently worth just more than £40,000.
Bitcoin mining does have a significant impact on energy consumption, with some miners using hardware which uses less energy to keep bills lower and maximise their overall profits.
Singh, of Oaks Farm, Six Hills, near Melton, was charged with two counts of abstracting electricity and was due to stand trial at Leicester Crown Court on October 11.
However, he pleaded guilty to both offences.
He was sentenced to 13 months and two weeks in prison.
Andrew Baxter, of the CPS, said: “This is a highly unusual case.
“The overwhelming majority of times we see offences of abstracting electricity, they are to support other criminal activities such as growing cannabis.
“Bitcoin mining is a legitimate legal enterprise. Sanjay Singh was simply acting out of greed.
“He was in the business to make money from his Bitcoin enterprise but was not honest enough to meet the cost of running the machines required to run the operation.
“He clearly had no qualms about his criminality as he carried on committing the same offence at a different site after he had been caught.
“As well as the dishonesty involved, the way Singh approached both premises left wires dangerously exposed, which put people at risk of serious harm.
“Prosecuting Sanjay Singh required painstakingly piecing together evidence of the work he had done to calculate the value of the electricity he had obtained illegally, as well as establishing that he was responsible for tampering with the power supply.
“We showed the court the level of planning involved to divert the power supply away from the meters, including directing two employees to do the practical work.”
Following Singh’s guilty plea, he was sentenced on the basis that the value of electricity stolen was £32,000.
His custodial sentence reflected his guilty plea late in the day and that he had continued to offend while under investigation.