The Spanish police didn’t find what they were looking for in the raid in the Santiponce area in Seville…

The Spanish police seized twenty-one Bitcoin ASIC crypto mining machines and thirteen thousand euros worth of equipment during the search. El Chapuzas Informatico reported that the police had received a “tip” about something else, as the authorities had raided an illegal marijuana plantation in Santiponce…

It came to the attention of the authorities that the building was illegally connected to the electrical grid. After breaking in, they found something else: they ran into mining machinery and the almost industrial cooling systems, far from “the grass”. They didn’t mess around with the video cards either, as they used the EVGA GeForce RTX 30 series, and some EVGA RTX 3080s were identified (and it wouldn’t be surprising if some of the machines had RTX 3090s in them…)

“Police investigations began on a possible indoor marijuana plantation that could be located in some stables located in Santiponce. After carrying out the first inquiries, the agents realized that the current indications did not correspond to the cultivation of marijuana. Instead, these facilities could be hosting a cryptocurrency farm with hardly any records in Spain.

With this information, the stables were entered and searched, where the agents discovered modern facilities for mining cryptocurrencies. In this place, 21 ASIC teams intervened, dedicated exclusively to Bitcoin mining, estimating their approximate value above 31,500 euros and calculating that they could provide a monthly profit of 2,500 euros. A RIG mining equipment was also found, also used for mining cryptocurrencies, which could have an approximate value of 13,000 euros and could generate profits of 1,000 euros per month,” the Spanish police said.

Crypto mining has one major drawback (apart from being bad for the environment): it consumes much electricity. And it can be spotted by the energy supplier if there is a sudden spike in consumption somewhere. According to the utility’s people, they have caused up to two thousand euros a month in damage by tapping into the grid…

Source: WCCFTech