Lawsuit Alleges Extensive Electricity Theft in Northern Minnesota for Bitcoin Mining Venture

BAUDETTE, MN (trfnews.i234.me) A civil lawsuit filed by the North Star Electric Cooperative in Baudette, Minnesota claims massive theft of their electricity for a bitcoin mining operation.
this from our news Partners at the uh
Northern Light region newspaper in badet
uh Northstar Electric Cooperative based
in badet has filed a civil lawsuit
alleging massive electricity theft uh
the suit was filed uh last week November
21st in uh Lake of the Woods uh Court
the suit alleges that a man from Roso
and a woman from Badger along with
several entities two own and operate
were involved in a scheme to steal
thousands of dollars in electricity from
Northstar over a period of several years
named in the suit are Ryan janicki Tina
Fel hubber and Northland Tire
Incorporated tyar LLC FJ Properties LLC
ice boox LLC Ryan Janik as Trustee of
the Ryan L Janek trust and John Doe of
persons and entities as uh defendants
the suit outlines the process by which
Northstar Electric officials discovered
what they believed to be massive theft
of services during a routine review of
data norstar noticed it was experiencing
a significant loss of electrical power
also known as line loss along its Assets
in early May of 2023 Northstar employees
were performing inspections of
distribution lines just just outside of
Roosevelt as part of its quest to
determine the source of the line loss
during the inspections they found a
Transformer hooked up at an address that
had been disconnected from northstar’s
Electric Cooperative services in
2018 Roso County Law Enforcement was
called the Civil complaint filed in
court last week explains in detail the
process of investigation that Northstar
employees and law enforcement undertook
they found at least 26 cryptocurrency
mining units along with Associated fans
and other devices that were connected to
the unauthorized conductor running
directly from uh two unauthorized uh
Transformers which were clearly drawing
massive amounts of unmetered electrical
power the source of the line loss had
been found the complaint States later in
May of 2023 law enforcement and
Northstar returned to the property with
search warrants and discovered that
cryptocurrency mining units had been
removed the complaint further explains
how the defendants had secured the
Transformers and uh restated a Facebook
message thread from janicki to an
employee of Northstar the conversation
allegedly shows Janek offering money to
the employee for technical information
and to not say a word a subnote to this
uh civil complaint filed in Court
explains ultimately this is a simple
case about the theft of electricity and
one should not get distracted by the
fact that cryptocurrency is involved or
that defendants have worked to hide
their bad acts and illg gotten gains I’m
Neil Berg reporting for the Northern
Light region newspaper online at NL
region.com