Stolen Electricity is Powering Illegal Crypto Farms Across the Globe
- Mexican authorities busted a 300-computer crypto mining farm in Puebla siphoning power from a federal hydroelectric dam, part of a nationwide crackdown that logged $817 million in electricity theft losses in just seven months.
- Malaysian police have uncovered 14,000 illegal Bitcoin mining sites since 2020, with miners stealing an estimated $1.1 billion worth of electricity from state utility Tenaga Nasional.
- From Cambodia to Kyrgyzstan, authorities are finding illegal crypto mining increasingly tangled up with money laundering, forced labor and organized crime networks.
Electricity theft is a global problem, and it’s getting more dire all the time. While the problem is most common in developing countries, where grid infrastructure is limited and utilities and state authorities have lower oversight capacities, developed countries are not immune either. This theft can occur in many forms and at many scales, from individuals tapping into power lines to power their individual residences to large-scale and sophisticated theft schemes to power entire cryptocurrency mining farms.
Just this week, Mexican authorities busted a clandestine operation in rural Puebla, where 300 computers were using stolen electricity to mine cryptocurrency around the clock. The operation was siphoning electricity from a federal hydroelectric complex, and could be connected to a larger money laundering operation.
“This activity consumes a great deal of energy and generates a lot of noise, which is why operators seek out isolated and very remote locations. That is what alerted us,” Francisco Sánchez, head of Puebla’s Public Security Secretariat, recently told reporters. “We had been tracking reports that this activity was taking place in that part of the state, particularly because of its proximity to the [Nuevo Necaxa] dam. There was a very large power connection.”
Police authorities say that this operation is just one of many similar illegal ventures in Puebla and other neighboring states in central Mexico. Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) is spearheading a nationwide crackdown on electricity theft, which has become an increasingly grave issue. Based on the most recent available data, from January and July 2024, 6,346 GWh of losses were reported due to electricity theft, meter tampering and illegal connections. This amounts to a loss of approximately 13.8 billion pesos (about $817 million). It’s safe to assume that the numbers for 2025 and 2026 are considerably higher.
Mexico is not alone in this fight. Electricity theft to power cryptocurrency mining operations occurs globally, in rich countries like England as well as developing nations. But the problem seems to be particularly acute in Southeast Asia. Malaysian authorities, for example, have initiated their own crackdown on illegal Bitcoin mining operations, which stole approximately $1.1 billion worth of electricity from state-owned energy company Tenaga Nasional from 2020 to 2025. Over that time period, the Malaysian police force recorded a stunning 14,000 illicit Bitcoin mining sites across the country. And the problem is not limited to financial fallout – it also poses a critical threat to Malaysia’s energy security.
“The risk of allowing such activities to happen is no longer about stealing,” Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir, the deputy minister of energy transition and water transformation, was quoted by Bloomberg late last year. “You can actually even break our facilities. It becomes a challenge to our system.”
Moreover, global authorities are reporting that cryptocurrency mining schemes are increasingly interlaced with organized crime. “Cryptocurrency mining is not inherently criminal, but authorities are increasingly finding links between illegal crypto mining, online gambling, money laundering, and Southeast Asia's industrial-scale cyber scam networks,” DW reported last month. In Cambodia, crypto has been linked with forced labor operations, while in Kyrgyzstan (sometimes known as Cryptostan for the number of mines exploiting the nation’s subsidized energy rates) police report that “virtual assets are being folded into the country’s criminal infrastructure like cyber fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, [and] the concealment and movement of illicit funds.” Meanwhile, in Mexico, it is speculated that Bitcoin might be at the bottom of a multiple homicide of a rock star and his entire family.
For every operation that is discovered and shut down there are many more that continue to fly under the radar, especially in poor countries that are the least equipped to detect theft – and that can afford it the least.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
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