The headmaster of a Chinese high school was fired after stealing electricity from the school to mine cryptocurrency, local media reported.
Lei Hua deployed eight ethereum mining machines in the school for about a year, racking up an electricity bill of 14,700 yuan ($3140), according to an article published online by a state-owned radio station in Hunan, the central Chinese province where the school is located. Last month Lei was dismissed from his post after the power theft was detected, the report said.
Calls made to the local county police station on Friday were not answered. Efforts to contact the high school were also not successful.
Cryptocurrency mining is the process whereby new coins are offered as a reward for building and maintaining the public ledger of every transaction that has taken place for cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin and ethereum. Such activity, requiring high end computing power, is usually undertaken by specialised computing chips that consume large amounts of power.
Lei started mining ethereum at his home in June 2017 after he paid about 10,000 yuan ($2132) to buy his first mining machine, which consumed nearly 21 kilowatt-hour of electricity per day, according to the report. In order to save money on his power bill, Lei soon relocated the machine to his school and subsequently installed another seven mining computers in the school's computer room over the period of a year.
