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A gentleman in the southeast orange-growing state was caught and accused of mining cryptocurrency at work, according to the Tampa Bay Times:
TAMPA — A Department of Citrus employee was arrested after he used state computers to produce virtual currency for himself, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Matthew McDermott, 51, of Davenport was the information technology manager for the Florida Department of Citrus, the agency that oversees the state's citrus industry... [H]e used several computers in the Department of Citrus to mine for virtual currency, which include bitcoin and litecoin.
He wasn't just mining--he was allegedly really, really into it, to the tune of tens of thousands of Department of Citrus dollars:
Utility bills for the department jumped by more than 40 percent between October 2017 and January 2017, at a cost of about $825... McDermott also spent more than $22,000 using a state purchasing card between July and December, [buying] 24 graphic processing units, the FDLE said.
"Grand Theft" and "Official Misconduct" were his charges upon arrest. With bail set at just $5,000 (less than 1 BTC), he probably made bail pretty quickly.
It seems that mining cryptocurrency is the new en vogue temptation scandal.
Also at The Week, whose story mentions the previous incident at Russian nuclear facilities.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Hyper on Thursday March 15 2018, @09:29AM (24 children)
If you ran Seti@home or folding@home on a work computer
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday March 15 2018, @09:59AM (13 children)
Odd how ethics change with societal mores - a decade ago running folding@home would have been perfectly acceptable, and likely something that would make the boss think "a little odd, but; I have to hand it to them; if running some weird software keeps them enthusiastic then who am I to quibble?"
(Score: 4, Informative) by krishnoid on Thursday March 15 2018, @10:16AM (7 children)
I'll bet you half the delta on those cards [arstechnica.com] the department could turn around and sell them for a nice profit over what the card was charged for (if they act quickly).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @10:41AM (4 children)
And then pay tax on the income, and calculate costs of electrify and pay someone a working wage to do this and accounting and legal fees....is it worth it?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday March 15 2018, @01:30PM (3 children)
Electricity is a sunk cost, as is the purchase of the cards. At this point it's a question of how much of the wasted wealth an be recovered. So is $22,000 plus appreciation worth the wages and accounting of selling them? I'd guess probably yes.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 15 2018, @06:15PM (1 child)
Electricity is a sunk cost
No it isn't! You pay more if you use more. That's the opposite of a sunk cost.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:13PM
Presumably they're no longer running the bitcoin miner - so the electricity already used is a sunk cost, along with every other expense that has already been incurred. Electricity used today is an ongoing expense - electricity used yesterday is a sunk cost.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:55PM
In a sane organization: yes. In the State bureaucracy, it might cost $22,000 in meetings and deliberations to decide where the recovered funds and profits (if any) actually go.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 15 2018, @06:27PM
If it had been aprivate company, they could have organized a nice game tournament as their next team-building exercise.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday March 16 2018, @07:40AM
Very interesting post! Thanks!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @10:45AM
Our boss started it. All the school PCs ran it
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 15 2018, @11:44AM (3 children)
As long as they're not charging $22K for additional FAH equipment...
The $825 increase in electric bill might have been overlooked without the capital purchase (however, without the capital purchase, I imagine the increase in electric bill would have been much smaller....)
"Old school" office PCs used somewhere in the neighborhood of 100W (+/- 30%), so with Florida electric power rates around $0.11/kWh, that's around $100 per year per PC for 24x7x365 on-time. Your average tech-nerd might have a half-dozen machines on their desk humming away, so that's hardly worth making a fuss over.
However, employees who break out the company card to purchase $22K worth of new and un-needed gear for the purpose of personal monetary gain - that's gotta get nipped in the bud, frozen back before it spreads, quarantined and burned out like canker.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @02:58PM
$100 per PC per year for a normal work desktop. You need to up that number quite a bit when you put a modern, high wattage GPU card in that machine and run it full blast 24/7/365.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday March 15 2018, @07:47PM (1 child)
This article reminds me that I need to run a report of all of my procurement cards and look for this kind of thing... I am going to do some victim blaming here though about the lack of good internal controls. We cap pcard transactions at 5k (asset threshold) and everything less than that must go through the requisition process. There are easy ways to monitor this kind of thing year round that should be in place, hopefully florida learns from this and implements protections.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:51PM
State, Department of Citrus... unlikely. More likely for some politicians to yell at the higher level managers to keep a closer eye, and then continue with business as usual.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @10:08AM
Seize the means of computation!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by den Os on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:17PM
Our old alpha based computers running VMS did not have power management on the cpu's, So running seti@home while the processor was idle didn't cost any additional electricity.
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:21PM (1 child)
No. Hands up if you bought $22,000 worth of GPUs to run the GPU-assisted version of Whatever@home on every computer in your department.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @10:19PM
Going for the nice old fashioned "burn spare cpu cycles" there. ..not the "buy a new computer to commit fraud" obviously
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @05:26PM
With SETI@home we provided computation for humanity's benefit. These fools stealing work resources to mine buttcoin are doing it for personal gain.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 15 2018, @06:34PM
Folding this exact minute. Pretty much started folding as soon as the new 4K monitor required a discrete video card, which has essentially nothing else to do than push 2D pixels.
Compared to the lab equipment, the electric draw is negligible, and paid by the landlord, who doesn't seem to mind the aforementioned lab (not sure how much they pay per kWh, for the whole building, and the car charger in front).
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday March 15 2018, @07:58PM
Shoot, I ran the DESCHALL client on several work computers back in 1997. And this was a hospital. It was a different time.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:35PM (2 children)
I knew someone who was fired for running seti@home on a work computer, does that count?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 15 2018, @09:02PM (1 child)
I knew someone who was fired for some other reason that was not a legitimate basis for firing, but running seti@home on a work computer was something they could put in writing on the discharge form, does that count?
Grocery store I worked for provides "free, no tipping" carry out service. Except, in the neighborhood I worked in, all the customers tipped - and even got upset if you refused the tips. So, at that store, when management wanted to fire anyone, they'd put them on package duty then go catch them accepting a tip. Base pay was around $5-7/hr there, and the average tip for carry out was $1 (much higher around Christmas), so tips amounted to over half of actual income - especially after taxes; everybody, including management when doing package duty, took the tips.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 16 2018, @03:27PM
It could if you're looking for reasons to deny unemployment or not in a right-to-work state. Misuse of equipment is certainly a disciplinable event.
This sig for rent.