Cryptocurrency ‘mining operation’ discovered under high school allegedly run by ex-town employee

By LAURA HAEFELI

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    COHASSET, Massachusetts (WBZ) — An ex-town employee is accused of running a “cryptocurrency mining operation” out of Cohasset High School. Former Cohasset assistant facilities director Nadeam Nahas, 39, was due to be arraigned in Quincy District Court Thursday but never showed up, forcing the judge to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Cohasset police said another town worker discovered the mining setup in a “remote crawl space under the school” in December of 2021. He saw electrical wires and several computers “that seemed out of place,” police said.

The operation was illegally using power from the school’s electrical system, police determined after consulting IT professionals. Investigators with the Coast Guard and Homeland Security helped to safely remove the mining equipment and figure out where it came from.

The equipment used in the alleged cryptocurrency mining operation, and the crawl space in Cohasset.

“He was effectively creating money,” said Larry Glazer, a crypto expert and managing partner at Mayflower Advisors in Boston.

Glazer said the suspect was likely using the crawl space operation to create his own money on the taxpayers’ dime.

“It’s something that can’t be done efficiently at home in New England because the cost of electricity is so prohibitively expensive,” he said. “You had an employee who was effectively stealing electricity from the community from the taxpayers and from the town.”

After a three-month investigation, police charged Nahas with fraudulent use of electricity and vandalizing the school. Nahas resigned from his job in early 2022, police said.

Cohasset Public Schools told WBZ-TV in a statement “we were cooperative in assisting the Cohasset Police throughout the investigation,” but offered no further comment.

As CBS News explains, crypto is digital currency that can be made or “mined” by using specialized computer processors running on vast amounts of electricity.

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