In the village of Maslyanino in the Novosibirsk region, police have uncovered a cryptocurrency mining scheme. According to investigators, the owner of the equipment caused damage amounting to 4 million rubles.
The suspect is a 54-year-old local resident. He placed mining rigs in one of the village's houses, while not paying for the electricity to run them, obtaining it bypassing the meter. The incident added to a series of cases against "gray" miners that are being opened across the country this autumn.
How the scheme worked
Mining equipment consumes significant amounts of energy, and after several months of continuous operation, the electricity bill grows to large sums. In this case, the energy company's losses were estimated at 4 million rubles.
An investigator from the Maslyaninsky district police department opened a criminal case under Part 2 of Article 165 of the Russian Criminal Code. This provision describes causing property damage through deception or abuse of trust — a situation where a person does not directly steal property but deprives the owner of the income due to them. The second part of the article applies to major damage, and the maximum penalty under it is up to five years in prison.
A systemic trend, not an isolated case
The same article appears in other recent stories from the regions. Near Irkutsk, police seized the ninth forest farm of the year connected directly to power lines: the grid company estimated losses at more than 1 million rubles, and in total since the start of the year more than 110 illegal mining devices have been discovered in the region. In Nalchik, a case under Article 165 was opened against a local resident who, according to the Interior Ministry, consumed electricity worth approximately 5 million rubles bypassing meters.
In a number of regions, energy companies independently identify suspicious consumers and pass the data to police. A sign of mining is considered to be consumption twice the norm without seasonal or daily fluctuations. Therefore, neither a private house nor a forest area saves one from inspection.
For the crypto industry, the trend is obvious: illegal connections increasingly rarely end in an administrative fine and increasingly often in a criminal case. Against this backdrop, industry associations, in particular RAKIB, are promoting a model in which mining operates as a managed load and does not shift costs onto the population.
Cryptalist analysis: The tightening of law enforcement against "gray" mining in Russia is creating a steady demand for legalization and transparent energy consumption. For the market, this is a signal: regulatory risk in the home mining segment is growing, while institutional players gain a competitive advantage through compliance with regulations and predictable energy infrastructure.