Spain’s Policía Nacional have released a video of officers using a battering ram to raid a house being used to mine crypto through what law enforcement said was an illegal electricity connection.
The footage shows several officers smashing through the front door of a chalet in Toledo, a town 70km south of Madrid. Once inside, they reveal dozens of makeshift ventilators cooling ceiling-high cables and electronic devices.
?Así desmantelamos una granja ilegal de minería de #criptomonedas en un chalet de #Toledo Contaba con más de 100 procesadores en funcionamiento y equipos de refrigeración y extracción de humo y calorLa granja se mantenía a través de una conexión ilegal al fluido eléctrico pic.twitter.com/oblVyjMUx7
The video also captured holes broken open in the floor and the walls, where there appeared to be clandestine connections to underground electricity circuits.
Spanish police reported that the chalet had more than 100 processors in operation, alongside specialist equipment for cooling devices and extracting smoke and heat. The machinery was hooked up to an illegal electricity connection, they added, and was being used to mine cryptocurrency.
Authorities have identified a woman as the alleged perpetrator, and she is facing charges over the electricity fraud.
“The investigation was initiated when detecting a high electricity consumption and a thermal emission released by the home higher than those that would correspond to a family home,” a police statement on the operation read.
Bitcoin mining is the process of creating new bitcoin by solving a computational puzzle. ‘Miners’ get paid, usually in crypto, but the main setback is that the process consumes high amounts of electricity.
The bust comes at a sensitive time for energy issues in Spain, as electricity prices have hit record highs, according to recent reports by El País and the Comision Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC).
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