Authorities Uncover Bitcoin Mining Machines In Venezuelan Prison During Raid

Venezuelan authorities uncovered a Bitcoin mining rig during a raid at the Tocorón prison in Aragua state.

Bitcoin mining can be a profitable enterprise that entails a significant investment in hardware and electricity.

The majority of these Bitcoin mining rigs can make at least $2,000 every day on average, with some reporting making as much as $5,000 daily, which is why it is no longer surprising for criminals, even inside prison cells, to conduct this kind of activity.

Last week, Venezuelan police, in an attempt to crack down on Tren de Aragua -- one of the most powerful organized crime groups in the South American country -- conducted a raid at the Tocorón prison in Aragua state with 11,000 men. The facility had served as the headquarters of the gang, which also operates in other Latin American countries.

Tren de Aragua is believed to be involved in all sorts of illicit activities, including human and drug trafficking, extortion and many other crimes.

It was a "successful operation that allowed us to strike a blow against criminal groups," Venezuela's Interior and Justice Minister Remigio Ceballos said, adding that the authorities made some surprising discoveries, including unusual contraband in the possession of inmates.

Aside from rocket launchers, grenades and bullets, authorities also seized Bitcoin mining machines inside one of the most dangerous places in Venezuela.

Prisons in Venezuela are notorious for being overcrowded and dangerous, but the one in Tocorón, believed to have been run by criminals for years, features a mini-zoo and a swimming pool, among other facilities.

"There were bitcoin miners in one of the most dangerous places in Venezuela," Javier Bastardo, Bitcoin Ambassador in Latin America, shared on X (formerly Twitter), alongside a brief clip of the raid.

"Recently, we saw an intervention in Tocorón, one of the most known jails in the country, in which the criminals were in control. Besides all the weird things that they had, they even had some Bitcoin miners operating there," Bastardo said, before adding, "Bitcoin is an open network. For friends, and enemies."

The discovery of Bitcoin machines in a Venezuelan prison is not an isolated case.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, Chilean authorities uncovered a drug trafficking ring in Santiago that operated Bitcoin mining.

In May 2022, a psychiatric clinic at Moscow's Prisión de Butyrka, one of Russia's oldest prisons, was secretly transformed into a cryptocurrency mining farm with the facility believed to have been working inside the prison in central Moscow from November 2021 up to February 2022, drawing electricity paid for by the government, the authorities have found out.

The Bitcoin mining operation housed cryptocurrency minting hardware which consumed around 8,400 kW of electricity, which cost the government more than $1000 (62,000 rubles), a local news outlet reported.