Hong Kong police have detained two males on suspicion of diverting electrical energy from care houses for the disabled to energy cryptocurrency mining machines.
Police allege the pair, aged 32 and 33, used their entry throughout renovation work to put in eight units within the suspended ceilings of two workplaces. The machines ran across the clock, including as a lot as $1,153 (HK$9,000) to month-to-month energy payments.
Inspector Ng Tsz-wing from Sham Shui Po’s expertise and monetary crime squad mentioned the case got here to mild after one dwelling observed repeated slowdowns in its web service. Its IT employees uncovered unauthorised gear hid above the workplace ceiling, and related units have been later found in one other dwelling in Sau Mau Ping.
Police arrested the suspects final Friday in Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po on prices of “abstracting electrical energy.” Investigators imagine the boys acted alone moderately than as half of a bigger syndicate.
Ng urged organisations to maintain shut watch over contractors throughout renovations and to watch electrical energy payments for sudden will increase. He warned that hid gear can stay hidden for months. Beneath Hong Kong’s Theft Ordinance, illegally utilizing electrical energy carries a most sentence of 5 years in jail.
“The general public must also pay extra consideration to electrical energy payments or community utilization and make related checks and notify police in case they discover some suspicious circumstances,” Ng mentioned, in line with the South China Morning Submit.
Unlawful crypto mining is “energy theft and a security danger,” Shanon Squires, Chief Mining Officer at Compass Mining, advised Decrypt. He added that, “This exercise goes in opposition to core tenets for a lot of Bitcoiners, equivalent to personal property rights and never harming others. Participating in electrical energy theft is immediately taking somebody’s property with out permission and inflicting them hurt by sticking them with the invoice.”
Squires identified that the mining rigs proven by Hong Kong police “don’t look like Bitcoin miners,” noting that, “At smaller scales, it is doable that unlawful mining is extra frequent than typically perceived, particularly for altcoin mining moderately than Bitcoin, until it is a larger-scale operation.”
Crypto mining and vitality consumption
Cryptocurrency mining, the method of utilizing specialised computer systems to unravel advanced mathematical issues in alternate for cash, is notoriously energy-hungry.
Analysis by Digiconomist estimates that Bitcoin mining alone generates an annual carbon footprint of greater than 105 million tonnes of CO2, corresponding to Belgium’s whole emissions. Its electrical energy use is just like Thailand’s, and its freshwater demand mirrors Switzerland’s.
The Hong Kong case is much from remoted. In Thailand earlier this 12 months, police raided three deserted homes in Pathum Thani province and seized 63 mining machines that have been illegally linked to utility poles.
Within the UK, officers in West Yorkshire uncovered an operation in Bradford the place miners have been operating off a bootleg electrical energy provide.
And in Central Asia, officers have additionally reported widespread abuse of vitality grids. Tajikistan’s lawyer normal mentioned unlawful mining drained greater than US$3.5 million value of electrical energy within the first half of 2025 alone, whereas in neighbouring Kazakhstan, authorities found miners tapping into sufficient energy to produce a metropolis of 70,000.
