Topic: Police confuse Bitcoin power usage for pot farm (Read 3771 times)

Shutup Dude!  You're going to give away the game!

grow weed in a secret room and use the mining as a cover for the power bill and thermal radiation

Blogger Mike Esspe captured an IRC chat that supports the rumor floating around that at least one bitcoin miner has been arrested.

In regards to if being a miner will bring the cops to your doorstep, according to the Bitcoin Miner, the power consumption will be somewhat like the electric usage for "marijuana grow-op." An example was "The Canadian town of Mission, BC has a bylaw that allows the town's Public Safety Inspection Team to search people's homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day." There have allegedly been reports floating in IRC of two different cases of police showing up at a bitcoin miner's residence with a search warrant.

Will it become more common to confuse bitcoin miners with weed-growing operations? It is somewhat common for police to monitor unusually high power consumption if a person is a "suspect." For example, in a NetworkWorld report, Ohio police and the DEA file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected of running an indoor pot growing operation. If a stakeout does not uncover anything illegal or point to a "grow house," then utility consumption records can be sought. DEA Agent Anthony Marotta said high electricity usage does not always mean the residence is an indoor pot farm and has surprised federal agents. "We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers. I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home."

It is unclear at this point if more bitcoin miners will have police show up with a warrant on their doorstep after more false positives, mistaking the power consumption to create virtual P2P currency as electricity usage needed to grow weed.