Police arrest 16 suspected of cloud mining over 5.1m yuan

Police in Ruian, East China's Zhejiang province, arrested 16 suspects who allegedly implanted programs to secretly control computers in more than 30 cities for cloud mining.

According to the police, the suspects controlled more than 100,000 computers and had mined more than 5.1 million yuan ($770,000) since last July.

In August 2017, a computer club owner surnamed Liu reported to police that his computers were running very slowly. They could not be used to search for information, let alone play computer games.

He and other computer club owners also found soaring electricity fees and that more than 70 percent of the computers' system resources were occupied when no programs were running.

Police later discovered that a person surnamed Chu, who was in charge of equipment maintenance for those clubs in Ruian, had implanted cloud mining programs on the computers.

He and his accomplice also publicized the programs to nearly 100 maintenance companies in more than 30 cities across the country.

The 16 suspects have been charged with illegally providing computer-controlling programs, tools and illegally controlling computer information systems.