Federal prosecutors in Mexico, the Navy, and the state police of Puebla seized 300 cryptocurrency mining machines at a remote site in Tlaola, which were siphoning electricity directly from a federal hydropower complex, the state's Ministry of Security reported.
Noise and Isolation Gave Away the Mining Operation
The site is located in the Sierra Norte, the rugged northern highlands of Puebla, in a municipality with a population of about 20,000. Staff members, who had transformers, medium-voltage terminals, and working satellite internet antennas, were also taken away.
The seized devices were graphics processing units (GPUs), ruling out Bitcoin mining and indicating the mining of cryptocurrencies that are still mined with graphics cards. The targeted cryptocurrency of the operation has not been confirmed by authorities yet.
In a September 6 post on X, the State Security Secretariat stated that the site was secured jointly by the federal attorney general's office, the Navy, and forces from the state of Puebla.
The site housed "electrical infrastructure, satellite internet, and specialized equipment" for creating digital assets.
"Mining consumes an enormous amount of energy and generates a lot of noise, so operators look for isolated and very remote places. That's exactly what alerted us," State Security Minister Francisco Sanchez told journalists.
Sanchez added that the tip came from the site's proximity to the Nuevo Necaxa dam, where investigators were looking into reports of illegal mining, and that "there was a very large connection to the electrical grid there."
Expert Teams Investigate Illegal Cryptocurrency Money Laundering Network Activities
Sanchez described the Tlaola site as one node in a broader network that is leveraging the hydropower infrastructure of the Sierra Norte for its purposes. He said similar activity is being observed in neighboring states, and the search has already spread to nearby municipalities.
Forensic accountants are trying to establish who paid for the equipment, and the state government is investigating whether the coins mined at the site were used to launder proceeds from criminal activity.
In 2025, Mexican authorities shut down three more mining operations in Puebla and neighboring Tlaxcala.
As reported by Cryptopolitan, in Malaysia, the national energy company Tenaga Nasional is said to have lost over $1.1 billion from 2020 to August 2025 due to electricity theft related to mining.
In June, Thai authorities seized 315 Bitcoin mining machines in five northeastern provinces, estimating damages from tampered meters and unpaid bills to be around $1.2 million.
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