US civil servant caught using office computer for mining, investigation shows this is not an isolated case

An employee of the New York City Department of Education was caught mining Bitcoin on an office computer and has been disciplined for it.

In a recent disciplinary statement released by the New York Conflict of Interest Committee, Vladimir Ilyayev, an employee of the Department of Education, admitted to mining Bitcoin for several weeks between March and April 2014. Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process during which new transactions are added to the blockchain, producing new coins after each block is generated.

It is reported that the mining software installed by Ilyayev would run at night, and he would monitor the specific progress at home.

The document, signed by Ilyatev, Karen Antoine, a lawyer for the New York Department of Education, and Richard Briffault, the chairman of the conflict of interest committee, states:

From March 19, 2014 to April 17, 2014, I used my office computer to run the mining software every night from 6pm to 6am, until my Bitcoin mining software was forcibly shut down by the IT department of the Ministry of Education.

The committee ruled that Ilyayev violated city regulations by using public events and resources for financial gain, but he was only deducted four days of paid annual leave, which totaled $611.

The statement reads:

The committee referred to previous cases of misuse of public events and resources for profit-making activities and decided not to impose additional penalties.

Ilyayev is not the first New York Department of Education employee to be investigated for using work equipment to mine Bitcoin, according to records in public archives.

In an April 2015 letter, the conflict of interest committee mentioned a network engineer who attempted to run mining software on his Department of Education computer. However, the engineer was not punished because "there was no evidence that he successfully obtained Bitcoin."

In January, a Federal Reserve employee was fined $5,000 and placed back on probation after he was caught mining bitcoin using a server owned by the U.S. central bank.