A former employee of Cohasset is facing an arrest warrant after being accused of stealing electricity from the town in order to power a cryptocurrency mining operation. Nadeam Nahas, 39, was summoned to court to be arraigned on charges of vandalizing a school and stealing electricity, but he failed to appear.
Police discovered 11 powerful computers used for mining cryptocurrency in the basement crawl space of Cohasset Middle-High School in December of 2021. Some of the computers had been placed in coolers found in the space and ductwork was present to vent heat from the machines outside. It is believed the machines were operating 24/7.
After a three-month probe, police determined that Nahas, the assistant director of the facilities department, was allegedly stealing electricity from the people of Cohasset to make money mining crypto.
Nahas denied knowing anything about the equipment found near the boiler room, but police presented evidence he had purchased items at Home Depot that were traced through skew numbers on some of the ductwork located in the crawl space.
The mining computers used 455 kilowatt hours per day, costing $17,492.57 over a 7.5 month period from April 28 through Dec. 14, 2021. Nahas resigned from his job while under investigation in early 2022.
