In a story that sounds like the second act of a Silicon Valley cautionary tale, a Dutch turbine engineer learned the hard way that you don’t quietly re-purpose industrial power for personal profit — especially when your employer’s systems are already under cyber-siege.
A court in Assen sentenced a then-technical manager (born 1979) to 120 hours of community service on Nov. 13, 2025 after finding he had secretly connected three cryptomining rigs and two Helium hotspots to Nordex’s internal networks across two wind farms in the Netherlands.
His entrepreneurial side hustle ran from Aug. 16 to Nov. 22, 2022, and it involved plugging rigs into a Nordex router at the Gieterveen substation and installing Helium nodes inside turbines at Waardpolder.
The court didn’t mince words about abuse of trust. “He has seriously damaged his employer’s trust by abusing his position as technical manager,” judges wrote — and yes, that sentence reads like an HR memo penned with a gavel.
Prosecutors charged the engineer with three offenses: theft of electricity, unlawful access / computer breach, and a curious allegation that the miner’s traffic had “added data” to Nordex’s automated systems.
The court tossed that last charge — explaining in some oddly educational legal prose that blockchain verification traffic and Helium packets don’t qualify as a legally actionable “addition” of identifiable malware data.
In short: mining and network verification are “indivisible data traffic,” not a cartoonish “added virus” you can blame for everything.
Legal scholars called it an unusually detailed and helpful explanation of where traditional IT-crime charges meet modern distributed ledger systems.
That acquittal on the “added data” count didn’t save him from the more serious counts.
He admitted to theft and unlawful access, and judges emphasized the risk he created: this wasn’t office Wi-Fi he was borrowing — it was operational industrial systems, turbines that keep spinning and, importantly, keep the lights on and the payroll funded.
The court noted he showed “no concern” for potential disruptions to turbine operations, which is a neat way of saying his focus on crypto ROI briefly eclipsed basic public-safety thinking.
The timing also didn’t help his case...
Nordex had been grappling with a ransomware attack shortly before the crypto rigs were discovered — an incident widely attributed to the Conti crew in 2022 — and the presence of clandestine miners during a cyber incident “magnified the impact” of the defendant’s offenses, the judges observed.
The prosecution asked for 240 hours of community service and hinted prison might be appropriate for crimes touching industrial control systems.
The court halved that request to 120 hours, citing mitigating factors: he was a first-time offender, fully admitted the facts, the case had breached reasonable-timing limits by more than five months, and he’d presented evidence of depressive symptoms and burnout at the time.
The sentence reads as a mix of stern warning and reluctant clemency.
Financially, the tally was tidy: Nordex was awarded €4,155.65 plus statutory interest, and the defendant must pay the same amount to the state on Nordex’s behalf — with a stark judicial backup plan: fail to pay and face a “hostage” measure of up to 51 days in custody.
Likewise, if he fails to complete the community service, he faces 60 days of substitute detention.
The Dutch courts are nothing if not procedural about their mercy...
So what does the moral of this breezy parable look like?
If you’re tempted to monetize your employer’s kilowatts for a side hustle, remember three things:
(1) Industrial networks are not your personal cloud,
(2) “I was burned out” is an explanation but not an exemption.
(3) The law treats turbines and routers like serious infrastructure — not just convenient USB ports for your crypto dreams!
If anything, the case is a reminder: renewable energy may be green, but greening your wallet using someone else’s power is still theft.
The wind’s free — your ethics aren’t...
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#WindfallOfShame #NordexCrypto #HeliumHotspots #Gieterveen #Waardpolder #AssenCourt #CryptoMiningFail #ContiRansomware #TheftOfElectricity #ComputerBreach #CommunityService120 #IndustrialCyberRisk #BurnoutDefense #RailAgainstSideHustles #TurbineTrustBreach
Sources (brief): District Court of Assen judgment (sentencing delivered Nov. 13) summarizing facts that the defendant (born 1979) connected three cryptomining rigs and two Helium nodes to Nordex networks between Aug. 16 and Nov. 22, 2022; court language that the defendant “has seriously damaged his employer’s trust by abusing his position as technical manager”; dismissal of the “added data” charge with judicial reasoning distinguishing blockchain/Helium traffic from identifiable malware additions; contextual reporting referencing Nordex’s contemporaneous handling of the 2022 Conti ransomware incident; prosecutorial request for 240 hours and mitigating factors that led to 120-hour sentence; awarded civil damages of €4,155.65 plus statutory interest and matching compensation order with custody contingencies and substitute detention conditions.
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