Washington State Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Over $50k in Employer's Bitcoin

A Washington state man has pleaded guilty to stealing over $53,000 in Bitcoin from his Upstate New York employer by redirecting company computers to a mining pool he controlled.

Christopher Rankin was hired by a Bitcoin mining company in Niagara Falls in July 2021. After accessing the company's computers without authorization, he reset them and directed their operations to a mining pool he had created.

The result was a loss of $53,315.75 for his former employer, who had invested in the high-performance equipment.