Police authorities in Indonesia have purportedly shut down 10 Bitcoin mining operations and confiscated 1,134 Bitcoin machines on charges that their operators stole electricity worth close to $1 million.
As per a recent local report, the North Sumatra Police Force executed a crackdown on a Bitcoin mining operation spanning ten different locations in Indonesia. They seized 1,134 Bitcoin mining machines, eleven meters of electrical cable, and various computer equipment.
Irjen Agung Setya Imam Effendi, the Chief of Police for North Sumatra, asserted that the operation operators had allegedly manipulated the electrical circuits that supplied power to many Bitcoin mining machines.
“As we can see here, this is the PLN box. However, the electricity flow inside it is not the proper flow that should enter the box and be measured by the meter. Instead, what they took is the upper part, where electricity is taken directly from the pole and channeled inside.”
Additionally, it was stated that the cumulative loss resulting from the robbery of electricity at these ten locations is projected to amount to $143.4366,000, or 14.4 billion Indonesian Rupiahs (IDR).
This follows the life sentence of a Chinese government official who facilitated Bitcoin miners’ access to electricity.
Reportedly, the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court imposed a life sentence on Yi Xiao, a former vice chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference Party Group, for abuse of power in a Bitcoin mining enterprise.
Xiao purportedly managed a Bitcoin mining enterprise with a valuation of $329 million (2.4 billion Chinese yuan) operating under the corporate entity Jiumu Group Genesis Technology between 2017 and 2021.
Together with other corporate executives, Xiao amassed more than 160,000 Bitcoin processors and, at one point, 10% of the total electricity consumption of the city of Fuzhou.
