Ukraine Justice System Employee Caught Mining Crypto at Work

An IT staffer at Ukraine’s State Judicial Administration has been charged with illegally mining cryptocurrency at his workplace.

The prosecutor’s office of Kyiv reported Wednesday on its Facebook page that, together with other agencies, it has completed an investigation into the employee, who worked in the data systems division of the court administration department.

The unnamed individual is said to have taken advantage of the equipment and internet bandwidth allocated for Ukraine’s court documents database and the Judiciary web portal to mine cryptocurrency from January to May 2018. He is additionally alleged to have used workplace servers to host external websites, including three online stores and a website for motorcycle fans, the prosecutors office said.

The employee has been charged with illegal intervention in the work of computers and computer networks, and in the distribution of harmful software. According to Ukraine’s criminal code, if found guilty he faces up to six years in prison and a ban on working in government agencies.

The news follow a handful of other cases of illegal mining by government employees in the country. In November, Ukraine’s railway administration (Ukrzaliznytsia) caught employees mining crypto using the company’s power capacity in the city of Lviv. In August, law enforcement uncovered an illicit crypto mining facility at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant.