The Australian Federal Police (AFP) in a press release today charged a 33-year-old Government employee for modifying the agency’s computer network to mine cryptocurrency for personal gain.
According to the enforcement agency, the Killara (NSW) man, who held the position of an IT contractor reportedly manipulated programs to utilize the agency’s computer processing power to carry out such a dubious act and made profits of over AU$9,000 (US $6,148) from the mining operations.
The Australian Police officers in a raid on the IT contractor’s home located in Sydney seized his phone, laptop, data files, and the employee ID cards, sometime in March last year.
As per the release, the employee faces charges under the Criminal Code Act of the country for the following offenses:
- Unauthorized modification of data to cause impairment
- Unauthorized modification of restricted data.
According to the Acting Commander and Manager Cybercrime Operations, Chris Goldsmid, abuse of public office is quite a severe matter.
“Australian taxpayers put their trust in public officials to perform vital roles for our community with the utmost integrity. Any alleged criminal conduct which betrays this trust for personal gain will be investigated and prosecuted,” he commented.
In response to the laid charges, the employee is expected face the court today, the Sydney Local Court (Downing Centre) precisely and could land penalties such as a maximum of 10-years imprisonment and 2-years imprisonment, respectively.
While this effort by the AFP; likewise, other enforcement bodies is a bid to regulate unauthorized use of cryptocurrencies, it will be fair to note that violations can attract an unwanted penalty.
In April, Coinfomania reported that the United State regulator FinCEN, in a release declared penalties and fined California-based crypto trader, Eric Powers up to $35,000. His offense was offering peer-to-peer crypto exchange services without due registration.
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