Chinese school principal sacked over secret campus cryptocurrency scam – Tech News

A school principal has been sacked and his deputy disciplined for secretly mining digital currency on campus, racking up thousands of dollars in power bills for the school.

Lei Hua, principal of the Puman Middle School in Chenzhou, Hunan province, decided in June last year to mine Ethereum, a type of cryptocurrency.

He spent more than 10,000 yuan (RM6,012) on a “mining” machine but found that he could not pay for the huge amount of electricity needed to run the around-the-clock operation, Hunan Communications Radio reported on Thursday.

Lei moved the machine to a school dormitory, tapping into the school’s free power supply and Internet connection, the report said. He then bought seven more machines and moved them into the school’s electronics lab, using 14,714 yuan (RM8,846) in electricity in the 12 months till July this year.

Inspired by his boss’s success, Wang Zhipeng, Lei’s deputy, bought a machine and with Lei’s approval, moved the machine into a physics lab,…