A former employee of the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors has been fined $5,000 for secretly mining bitcoin on one of the Fed servers.
Besides the high fine, Nicholas Berthaume, a former Fed communications analyst, was put on probation for 12 months. According to thestatement by Mark Bialek, Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, on 27 January, Berthaume pleaded guilty to one charge related to an unlawful conversion of government property.
As the statement reveals, Berthaume was charged in October 2016. He had been engaged in bitcoin mining using a Fed server. For that, he installed unauthorised software on the server to connect to the bitcoin network.
The investigation could not determine how many bitcoins were produced with the help of the government server due to the anonymity of the cryptocurrency network.
“Berthaume also modified certain security safeguards so that he could remotely access the server from home. When confronted about these actions, Berthaume initially denied any knowledge of the wrongdoing. Later, however, Berthaume remotely deleted the software that he had installed in an effort to conceal his actions,” the statement reads.
Bialek added that these actions of the former Fed employee did not result in a loss of any information.