[2017-08-02] New York City Government Punishes Employee For Mining Bitcoin at Wo

[Slow death]

New York City Government Punishes Employee For Mining Bitcoin at Work

The City of New York (NYC) Conflicts of Interest Board has meted a disciplinary action against Vladimir Ilyayev, an employee of the city’s Department of Education, after being caught mining the cryptocurrency Bitcoin using his work computer.

Ilyayev has already admitted that he conducted Bitcoin mining during work hours in 2014.

Based on the public records about the case, the employee has installed mining software that ran at night on his work computer and monitored its progress from his home. The document was signed by Ilyayev, NYC Education Department counsel Karen Antoine, and Conflicts of Interest Board chairperson Richard Briffault.

Part of the public document reads:

"I ran Bitcoin mining software on my [work] computer from 6:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. every night from March 19, 2014 until April 17, 2014, when my Bitcoin mining software was shut down by [the Department of Education's] Division of Instructional and Information Technology."

Punishment

After careful and thorough investigation of the case, the board has issued a sanction against Ilyayev for violation of the city’s statutes relating to the use of city time and resources for personal financial gain. He was mandated to forfeit four days of paid annual leave that is worth a total of $611.

Bitcoin mining is an energy intensive process using a computer by which new deals are added to the Blockchain, generating new Bitcoin tokens that are equivalent to the value of the blocks created.

Other Bitcoin mining-related cases in government agencies

Ilyayev’s case is not the first case recorded in the city in relation to Bitcoin mining. In early 2015, a network engineer of the Department of Education was investigated by the Conflicts of Interest Board for trying to run mining software on his work computer. However, he was eventually cleared due to lack of evidence that he successfully mined Bitcoin.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-york-city-government-punishes-employee-for-mining-bitcoin-at-work

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[Terraformer]

I think Vladimir mined much more bitcoins in USD terms than $611 penalty. This is a rather weak punishment if they did not confiscate all gained BTC in favor of Department of Education.

[Gotottack]

Well this was a bit late of a news. At that time probably mining was worth doing on work computers but now, hell no.
You'll likely get a satoshi every 1 month if you use a normal desktop computer to mine bitcoins.
It won't even be worth your time installing and running the software.

[Kemarit]

I think Vladimir mined much more bitcoins in USD terms than $611 penalty. This is a rather weak punishment if they did not confiscate all gained BTC in favor of Department of Education.

Yeah. I think he got more bitcoins back then and probably worth more than the $611 penalty. However, the article did not mentioned how many bitcoin he had mined that time. And it was just a disciplinary action meaning to say that he is still around working with the Department till now.

Well this was a bit late of a news. At that time probably mining was worth doing on work computers but now, hell no.
You'll likely get a satoshi every 1 month if you use a normal desktop computer to mine bitcoins.
It won't even be worth your time installing and running the software.

Correct, that's why I said prior that he may have mined good amount of bitcoin for almost a month. And I think the penalty was based on the prevailing price at that time I assumed. He could have been investing on it our just hold and now its more than x4 of he price that year. Lucky guy. LOL.

[CryptoBry]

He got a very minor punishment for the crime of using the state property for his own personal gain. He should thank the judge for this very light decision against him. It is really wrong to use the properties of the government to make some money. This is never permitted by law and all government employees should understand and follow this principle.

[audaciousbeing]

I am sure what he did was just to see bitcoin as a means to earn money online no knowing he is willingly violating any rule but the punishment is mild if you ask me because if it were to be a private organisation, he light have lost his job especially if its violates the employee policy he willingly signed to before joining. But I still feel the punishment is just to serve as a deterrent rather than being punitive.

[odolvlobo]

I think Vladimir mined much more bitcoins in USD terms than $611 penalty. This is a rather weak punishment if they did not confiscate all gained BTC in favor of Department of Education.

It is doubtful that he mined $611 in BTC.

A standard PC at that time had a hash rate less than 500 MH/s and the difficulty was about 5006860589, which means it could earn about 0.00005 BTC/day. He mined for 12 hours per day for 30 days. A bitcoin was worth less than $600 then.

So, he earned 0.00005 x 30 / 2 x $600 = $0.45

BTW, this also demonstrates how mining was not always profitable, even in the "early" days when the difficulty was much lower.

A PC running at full capacity might draw 500W. At $0.10 / kWh, that would be $0.05 / hour in electricity cost. 30 days for 12 hours per day would cost $18.

He spend $18 of the city's money to earn $0.45 worth of BTC.

[Michhotdog]

He got a very minor punishment for the crime of using the state property for his own personal gain. He should thank the judge for this very light decision against him. It is really wrong to use the properties of the government to make some money. This is never permitted by law and all government employees should understand and follow this principle.

I am sure that 80 percent of officials are engaged in using their high state position for personal purposes. And they earn a lot of money on this.
And this man just wanted to increase his income. And I fell for it. I feel sorry for him