TL;DR Breakdown
• Naples financed crypto mining machines with taxpayer funds.
• BTC’s clandestine farm caused Suffolk County in New York to lose about $6,000 in electricity payments.
The attorney general charged a New York-based IT supervisor of mining crypto using taxpayer dollars. The information technology supervisor used his clients’ money to buy the BTC mining devices.
American Christopher Naples had over 40 crypto mining devices hidden in Riverhead, Suffolk County. At least 10 devices were activated in February, and the rest went into operation in the months before his arrest. Naples paid about $6,000 for electricity in the short time he worked at the makeshift crypto mining farm.
Christopher Naples’s BTC mining case
Suffolk County prosecutor Timothy Sini led the case and officially charged Naples with theft, corruption, and money laundering. If sufficient evidence is found, Christopher Naples could spend more than a decade in prison.
Prosecutor Sini said that crypto mining with BTC needed a lot of energy, and workers have to look for money to cover it. Naples caused the county to lose more than $6,000 in electricity bills since the February power-on and could have increased that debt if the farm was not promptly discovered. In addition, the IT supervisor stole a good deal of money from the taxpayers he worked with.
Secretary of State Janet Yellen seized the moment to call BTC trading illegal, and she feared these scams would become frequent. The cryptocurrency market has been in the sight of North American regulators for a long time, with increased focus in the year 2021. This occurs in sync with an increase in developing cryptos and new technologies based on Blockchain.
Cryptocurrency scams on the rise within the US
The Naples case was not the only one that affected cryptocurrency’s image in September as the Michael Ackerman situation was reborn recently. Since last year, businessman Michael Ackerman was arrested for the theft of $30 million that supposedly would cover investment funds in BTC. On Wednesday, the 8th of September, Ackerman pleaded guilty to the robbery, which could land him 20 years in prison.
Today, BTC has recovered in value to $47,206, with a rise of 1.62 percent in the last 24 hours. The SEC and other regulatory bodies are looking to substantially regulate the use of cryptocurrencies to crack down on these virtual scams.
Although the crypto environment is tense in North America, in El Salvador, they celebrate the successful Bitcoin adoption as legal tender. Other countries in Central America may follow in Nayib Bukele’s footsteps to make the chief cryptocurrency a legal tender in their countries.
