Employee Rankin faces prison after secretly hijacking 100 employer computers to mine Bitcoin for his personal cryptocurrency wallet in Western New York.
Rankin was hired in July 2021 by a mining company whose name was not disclosed by federal prosecutors. Aside from carrying out his assigned job duties, he accessed 100 corporate machines and redirected their computing power into his private mining pool, transferring the extracted cryptocurrency to wallets under his control.
Prosecutors from the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York said the unauthorised activity caused the hardware to operate in a continuous high-performance mode. Federal authorities stated that this heavy workload significantly shortened the lifespan of the equipment, corrupted stored data integrity, and resulted in the company losing 1.06683386 BTC that it would otherwise have mined itself, valued at $53,315 at the time of the offense.
Unauthorised cryptocurrency mining operations
Cryptocurrency mining requires specialized computer hardware to solve complex cryptographic equations, validating transactions on a blockchain network in exchange for newly generated tokens. Because the process demands immense processing energy and electricity, running mining rigs at peak intensity generates extreme heat and hardware strain, often causing permanent damage to internal components and storage systems.
Federal prosecutors charged Rankin with transmitting malicious code and commands to protected computers, alongside charges of causing damage to property. The criminal counts carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000, with sentencing scheduled to take place on November 17, 2026.
Similar illegal mining incidents
The case mirrors a separate investigation in Russia, where the head of an electrical laboratory at the Tyazhmash industrial enterprise in Syzran was suspected of unlawfully tapping power supplies to run unauthorised mining equipment over nearly four years.
Syzran is a major industrial hub located in Samara Oblast, Russia, where Tyazhmash operates as one of the country's primary heavy engineering and manufacturing plants. Industrial facilities have increasingly become targets for illegal mining operations due to their high-capacity electrical infrastructure and massive computing arrays.
