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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, Funny) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday March 15 2018, @01:30PM (1 child)
True story: A friend of mine was a mechanic working at a union shop. Some of the guys took advantage of union benefits and would slack off in various ways.
One guy would disappear to "go to the bathroom" for a couple hours during the day. He'd take magazines, crossword puzzles, books, etc. with him to the bathroom.
Some other guys were annoyed at him, so my friend gathered some pairs of old work boots, some works pants, and set up fake "guys in the restroom" in all the bathroom stalls. The lazy guy was really confused by it all for a day, since he couldn't find a place to waste time. (My friend shifted the boots etc. occasionally to make it believable. He himself would run to the bathroom when he saw the guy heading there, just to make some grunting and make it all look real.)
The next day my friend started having some fun with him (weirder noises etc.) -- culminating in two pairs of boots and pants in a single stall facing each other... Apparently freaked the guy out temporarily. Though he didn't know who played the prank. (IIRC, he tried calling a supervisor to come look in, but all the boots miraculous disappeared.)
After that, the guy stopped his long bathroom visits, though he found other ways to waste time of course.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 16 2018, @12:42AM
Where I work now, personal phones are strictly verboten. But going into the restrooms, because of the way the lighting is laid out you can see the shadows of forearms and thumbs twiddling phones cast across the floor, and you don't need to be creepy or nosey to see how obvious it is.
Although it's not my style to fuck off in the bathroom (or at all if I can avoid it, because the harder you work the faster the workday goes), I did have the peculiar habit of taking a section of newspaper from the break room and reading it as long as the kids were ready to be dropped off at the pool. The crinkle of turning the pages of a newspaper is a very distinctive and not so subtle sound, and even with others in there I didn't give a fuck. Since I preferred to shit like a king in the handicapped stall, I often left that section of newspaper draped neatly over the handrail after I was done so that people too poor to afford a data plan could have something to read.
It was a fun bit of trivia to see how long throughout the day the section of newspaper lasted in there. Providing hard-copy material to read at home for your shitting guests is one of those weird polite/unpolite things that even the most uptight prude won't hold against anybody.