Two IT workers employed by the government of Crimea were fired late last month after they were reportedly caught mining bitcoins at work.
RIA Novosti reports that the two unnamed individuals were employees of the Council of Ministers of Crimea, part of the territory's executive branch. The news service indicates the workers installed mining software on computers owned by the council, though the report didn't state how long the operation had been in place.
Through mining – the energy-intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain – the two were said to have raised only a small amount of bitcoin before being discovered.