Cohasset Police
After a former town employee of Cohasset, Massachusetts, was accused of stealing thousands of dollars in electricity from a local middle/high school to operate a secret cryptocurrency mine in a seemingly overlooked crawlspace, police grew concerned when the suspect missed a court date and couldn’t be located.
A warrant was then issued for the accused, 39-year-old Nadeam Nahas, who resigned his position at the Town of Cohasset last year, police said. That warrant got quickly pulled, though, after Nahas appeared in court today, Cohasset Police Department (CPD) communications specialist Justin Shrair told Ars.
The department can’t share any other new information at this time, Shrair told Ars. But he confirmed that the possible cryptocurrency mining operation was discovered in December 2021, when the director of Cohasset Middle/High School conducted a routine inspection and “noticed electrical wires, temporary duct work, and numerous computers,” which “seemed out of place.”
To investigate further, CPD told Ars that the director called in a range of experts. First, the town’s IT director confirmed that it was a cryptomine “unlawfully attached to the school electrical system.” Then, CPD called the US Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security to help safely remove the equipment and investigate the mining rig’s origins.
Their investigation took three months and led them to suspect Nahas, who at the time was an assistant facilities director for the town. That role is typically responsible for managing daily operations of town buildings. It was later confirmed by Boston ABC affiliate WCVB that the mining operation had stolen nearly $18,000 in electricity from the district.
The cryptomine’s operator was likely motivated to maximize cryptocurrency gains by negating the cost of operating the mine. Cryptomines notoriously run off an excess of electricity, with all the world’s cryptomines requiring more energy than the entire country of Australia, the White House reported last year. Where Cohasset is located in the Boston area, “electricity costs have exceeded the national average” by at least 48 percent over the past five years, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
CPD said that Nahas is presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law, but they found probable cause to charge Nahas with vandalizing the school and “fraudulent use of electricity.”
