A Minnesota man has been indicted for allegedly committing a cryptojacking scheme that resulted in $45,000 in losses to his former employer.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Friday that Joshua P. Armbrust, 44, of Orr is charged with one count of computer fraud in a case investigated by the FBI.
Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime in which an unauthorized party uses someone else's computing resources to mine cryptocurrency.
According to court records:
The scheme unfolded from December 2020 to May 2021 after Armbrust resigned in February 2020 from his position at Digital River, a Minnetonka-based global e-commerce and payment processing company.
Armbrust remotely accessed Digital River's Amazon Web Services account without authorization on numerous occasions, mining Ethereum cryptocurrency and costing the company $45,000 in losses.
The Ethereum was directed into a digital wallet and transferred to two Coinbase accounts registered in Armbrust's name. He then liquidated the cryptocurrency, totaling more than $7,000, and transferred the money into his Wells Fargo bank account.