Former Cohasset employee accused of stealing electricity for crypto operation to appear in court – Boston News, Weather, Sports

17 May 2023

in Mining

Reading Time: 2 mins read

COHASSET, MASS. (WHDH) – A former Cohasset employee accused of stealing electricity from the town to power a cryptomining operation is set to appear before a judge on Wednesday.

Police say Nadeam Nahas, 39, of Norwell, used 11 powerful computers to mine cryptocurrency. They were discovered in a basement crawl space adjacent to the boiler room at Cohasset Middle-High School in December of 2021.

Some of the computers had been placed in coolers found in the space. There was also ductwork present to vent heat from the machines outside.

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It is believed the machines were operating 24/7.

At first, it was a mystery why they were there. But police said a three-month probe with some help from federal investigators helped them determine Nahas, the assistant director of the facilities department, was allegedly stealing electricity from the people of Cohasset to make money mining crypto.

Police questioned Nahas and he told them he didn’t know anything about the equipment found near the boiler room.

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They said he got nervous when presented with evidence he had purchased items at Home Depot that were traced through skew numbers on some of the ductwork located in the crawl space.

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A police report said Nahas “became red in the face and began sweating quite a lot” when he saw the Home Depot receipts and reviewed posts on Twitter he had made about crypto.

Mining cryptocurrency is expensive because of the power needed for computers to do their job.

Police said the 11 computers in this case used 455 kilowatt hours per day, costing $17,492.57 over a 7.5 month period from April 28 through Dec. 14, 2021.

The report said Nahas previously worked in the HVAC department in the Plymouth school system, adding that an inspection of one school found suspicious vent holes in the concrete of a remote area of the Plymouth Community Intermediate School on Long Pond Road.

In Cohasset, officials said Nahas resigned his job while under investigation in early 2022.

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