Mexico Seizes 300 Crypto Mining Rigs Wired Into a Hydroelectric Dam

In brief

• Mexican federal prosecutors, the Navy and Puebla state police raided a property in Tlaola, in the state's remote Sierra Norte.
• Some 300 crypto mining rigs were seized in the operation.
• The operation drew power illegally from a complex fed by the Nuevo Necaxa dam.

Mexican federal prosecutors, the Navy and Puebla state police have seized 300 mining machines from a property in the Sierra Norte that was drawing electricity illegally from a federal hydroelectric complex, the state security ministry said on Sunday.

Alongside the rigs, officers took transformers, medium-voltage terminals and working satellite internet antennas from the site in Tlaola, a municipality of roughly 20,000 people. El País and Mexico News Daily describe the seized machines as GPUs, which would point away from Bitcoin and toward coins still mined on graphics cards.

While mining is legal in Mexico, prosecutors are preparing a charge of electricity theft.

Mining "consumes a great deal of energy and generates a lot of noise, which is why operators seek out isolated and very remote locations. That is what alerted us," state security minister Francisco Sánchez told reporters. Investigators had tracked reports of illegal mining in the region because of its proximity to the Nuevo Necaxa dam, he said, adding that, "There was a very large power connection."