Is this really happening with the power theft?
It is, I have seen it before, they go for the lowest dollar/th mining gears, and those usually ROI in 2-3 months, with the cabling and whatnot, they would be looking at 4-5 months ROI, it's a hit and run, they would deploy a few small farms here and there and hope for the best. When 4-5 months have passed anything that was not captured by the police will be running at 100% profit.
The funny thing is the government would sell those confiscated gears on auction and guess who would buy gears that don't make any profit if the power bill is paid?
Of course, this illegal probably everywhere, and you will be facing two types of risks, one is the police, and two is theft since those locations are remote and hard to secure, so in a nutshell, nobody should do it, but many people have been doing it for years, just goes out to show that if your power rate is that low (in their case is zero) little no management is needed.