In an apartment building on Vostochnaya Street in the city of Belebey of the Republic of Bashkortostan, local power engineers and law enforcement officers discovered an underground mining farm connected to a communal electricity meter.

It is not yet known who exactly bought and installed the ASIC miners, the prosecutor’s office of Bashkiria complains. However, it is known that the underground mining of cryptocurrencies went on for at least six months, and the total damage to the residents of the apartment building exceeded 250,000 rubles.

Now investigators are trying to establish which of the tenants made money on the miners who occupied two rooms of an ordinary apartment, and how long the farm worked exactly. After a legal assessment, a criminal case was initiated under Part 1 of Article 165 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Infliction of property damage by deception in the absence of signs of theft”). If the offender can be identified and detained, he faces up to two years in prison, or a fine of up to 300,000 rubles.

Earlier it was reported about a similar case in Krasnoyarsk. The underground farm worked there for more than four years, spending 874,000 rubles worth of electricity.