Indonesian police have recently launched a major crackdown on illegal Bitcoin mining activities.
As a result, 10 operations have been shut down because they are accused of stealing large amounts of power. The North Sumatra Police Force led the operation and seized a total of 1,134 Bitcoin mining computers, as well as other computers and 11 meters of electrical wire.
Irjen Agung Setya Imam Effendi, the chief of police in North Sumatra, said that the people who were running these operations had hacked electrical lines to power a lot of Bitcoin mining equipment.
![Indonesian police shut down 10 Bitcoin mining facilities image 119](https://i0.wp.com/nosisnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-119.png?resize=700%2C394&ssl=1)
![Indonesian police shut down 10 Bitcoin mining facilities image 119](https://i0.wp.com/nosisnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-119.png?resize=700%2C394&ssl=1)
Bypassing the normal process of metering and billing, this tampering involved taking energy directly from utility poles. Effendi said that the flow of energy wasn’t going into and being measured correctly by the PLN (state electricity company) boxes. Instead, it was coming straight from the poles, which is against the law.
The money that these illegal actions cost is very high. Police say that the total amount of money stolen from these 10 sites is about 14.4 billion Indonesian rupiahs, which is about $935,666. This action is a big step toward stopping energy theft that is linked to illegal cryptocurrency mining in Indonesia.
There has been a similar crackdown in China against illegal Bitcoin mining, which is similar to what is happening in Indonesia. A well-known case is that of Yi Xiao, a former official in the Chinese government who was given a life sentence for abuse of power in connection with a large-scale Bitcoin mining business. Xiao was vice head of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference Party Group. From 2017 to 2021, he ran a Bitcoin mining business worth 2.4 billion Chinese yuan, which is about $329 million. It was called Jiumu Group Genesis Technology.
With more than 160,000 Bitcoin mining computers, Yi Xiao’s business was truly impressive in its size. At its busiest, the business is said to have used an unbelievable 10% of Fuzhou city’s power supply.
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