NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A veteran public-sector IT worker on Long Island was caught mining cryptocurrencies at a Suffolk County building, costing taxpayers thousands in electricity bills, prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
Christopher Naples, 42, of Mattituck, works as an IT assistant manager at the Suffolk County Clerk’s Office, where discreetly installed 46 cryptocurrency mining devices beginning in at least February, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.
Naples’ alleged scheme to generate valuable Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies stole at least $6,000 in public energy bills, prosecutors estimate.
“Mining cryptocurrency requires an enormous amount of resources, and miners have to navigate how to cover all of those electricity and cooling costs,” District Attorney Sini said in a statement. “This defendant found a way to do it; unfortunately, it was on the backs of taxpayers."
Naples, who has been employed by the county since 2000, allegedly hid the devices in six rooms of the Clerk’s Office, including underneath removable floorboards; on top of or inside server racks; and inside an unused electrical wall panel, Sini’s office said.
“One of these rooms housed critically important computer servers, secure data storage systems and communications equipment for the entire County government, and when investigators entered the room, an alarm was going off that indicated the temperature was too high,” Sini added. “Within hours of the devices being shut down, the temperature in the room dropped 20 degrees."
Miners are rewarded in cryptocurrency for dedicating computing power to validating transactions made through that virtual currency. That computing power is incredibly energy-intensive and Sini’s office estimates that the cost to the county could be even higher.
Based on local energy costs, Sini’s office believes that each device could cost approximately $4,200 per month to run. Investigators are still parsing the total costs of Naples’s operation, he said.
Naples faces a maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison on felony corruption and grand larceny charges. He was arraigned at Southampton Town Justice Court and was released on his own recognizance. He is due back in court on Sept. 16.