Underground Mining Farm Shut Down in Russia’s Ulyanovsk Region, Causing Over 4 Million Rubles in Losses

Law enforcement officers in Russia’s Ulyanovsk region dismantled an underground mining farm operated by a 42-year-old individual entrepreneur. The damage from electricity consumption bypassing meters was estimated at more than 4 million rubles.

The mining farm operated on the entrepreneur’s production site in the work settlement of Terengas. To reduce electricity costs, the farm’s organizers, according to law enforcement, modified the structure of the metering devices installed at the transformer substation.

Due to this interference, the meters recorded only a small portion of the consumed energy. According to the investigation, the entrepreneur submitted underreported figures to the electricity supplier from December 2023 to September 2026.

During searches at the production site, police seized 84 cryptocurrency mining devices worth approximately 1 million rubles. Additionally, law enforcement discovered cooling systems and video recorders at the farm. The Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the “Sengileyevsky” district has opened a criminal case for fraud in a particularly large amount (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

The Ulyanovsk region is not included in the list of Russian regions where cryptocurrency mining is prohibited. The ban applies, in particular, to certain territories of the Irkutsk region, Buryatia, and the Zabaykalsky Krai, several North Caucasus republics, Moscow, the Moscow region, and some other territories.

Previously, law enforcement officers discovered another underground mining farm at the site of UAZ Avtokomponent, a subsidiary of the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant. The damage from unaccounted electricity consumption was estimated at more than 1 million rubles.