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posted by mrpg on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the Florida-Citrus-Man dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 16 2018, @12:42AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday March 16 2018, @12:42AM (#653211) Homepage

    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.