Louisiana Attorney General Investigates Own Office for Mining Cryptocurrencies

The Attorney General of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, has opened an investigation into his own office on concerns of mining cryptocurrencies. The investigation is focused on the office's information technology division.

Louisiana AG investigates information technology division

Among the people investigated is the director of the information technology division, who was recently dismissed from his position on allegations that some former employees were using state resources with the purpose to mine bitcoin. Landry has not confirmed that an investigation was ongoing when the former director was dismissed.

Actually, this occurred in September, when about a dozen IT employees lost their jobs. The whole case started after investigators found some mining hardware in the department and started to interrogate employees. Local media reported that for the moment no charges have been filed, but the investigation remains ongoing.

Of course, the focus on the action of the former employees does not only come from the fact that they might have used state resources. Computer systems might have also been compromised because of the mining operations. As imagined, the former employees claimed that they did not engage in wrongdoing and said that their firing occurred because of a misunderstanding.

One of the fired employees reportedly said that they were actually in the impossibility of using agency computers to mine bitcoin, as the computers lacked capability. Moreover, the former employee claimed that such an activity would have been traced immediately, as mining consumes a lot of energy, which would have triggered concerns.

An important thing to mention is that the attorney general has until now refused to talk too much about the case. The only thing he previously confirmed was that five employees were fired in September. The announcement was made in December, but at that point it was not confirmed if the decision was linked to potential mining activity within the department.