In the Nizhny Novgorod Region, a criminal investigation has been completed against employees of the Sarov Nuclear Center, who used a supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency. The case has been submitted to court, reports RT with reference to the press service of the Sarov City Court.

Scientists detained by the FSB at the beginning of last year are accused of unlawful access to computer information, the creation and use of malware, as well as violation of data storage rules.

The lawyer of one of the accused, Alexei Korolev, said that engineers until the last moment hoped that they could not be calculated, since they were the best programmers in the country.

“For several months they have been exploring ways to mine cryptocurrency. We looked at whether the computer meets the necessary capacities, and also developed our own program to go unnoticed. She did not display in the task manager where and when the user went. They thought that no one could calculate them like that , ”Korolev emphasized.

He added that since the engineers were not immediately detained, they still managed to get cryptocurrency.

“I can’t say what operational measures were carried out to detect them. But investigators said that the case was under control of the presidential administration and allegedly even reported to Putin about this, ”the lawyer explained.

According to him, after the detention, the miners immediately pleaded guilty.

“At first, the court chose a preventive measure in the form of detention, but later it was replaced with a recognizance not to leave, given that they had confessed. Of course, they regret what they did. But I think they went for it out of professional interest, and not for the purpose of profit, ” Korolev suggested.

The defendants in the case are two ex-employees of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center – the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) Andrei Rybkin and Andrei Shatohin.

The case of another employee – Denis Baykov – was set aside in a separate production. He is accused of using official mining computers. On September 17, 2019, the court sentenced him to a fine of 450 thousand rubles and forbade him to work in the public service and in local authorities for 2.5 years.

The date of the meeting in the case of Rybkin and Shatokhin has not yet been set.

Meanwhile, immediately after the detention of employees, representatives of the institute said that miners did not cause damage to the enterprise.

Recall about the scandal in the RFNC-VNIIEF, which is part of the state corporation Rosatom, it became known in February 2018. Then the security services detained three employees of the nuclear center. According to security officials, scientists connected over a local network to a service supercomputer for mining bitcoins.

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