Joshua Paul Armbrust, 45, a former engineer of the e-commerce company Digital River, was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to computer fraud for unlawfully using his former company's cloud computing account to mine ETH.
According to court records, Armbrust mined crypto through Digital River's Amazon Web Services account (AWS) from December 2020 to May 2021, causing more than $45,000 in cloud computing fees for the company, while earning about $5,800 in ETH for himself.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota stated that Armbrust “accessed the company's AWS account without authorization multiple times and used computing resources to mine Ethereum.”
Defense attorney William J. Mauzy argued that this act occurred “during a period of severe financial hardship and significant mental stress” when Armbrust was caring for his ailing mother, who later passed away. He emphasized that the defendant “is not a malicious hacker” but rather someone “acting out of desperation,” and that Armbrust took proactive responsibility, not hiding his actions.
However, the prosecutor asserted that this was not “a momentary mistake” but an intentional act aimed at personal gain, causing significant financial damage and disrupting the company's operations.
Armbrust was charged in November 2024 with a computer fraud offense related to “cryptojacking” — a form of cybercrime in which the attacker unlawfully uses another person's computer resources to mine crypto.
Notably, the incident occurred when Ethereum was still operating under the “proof-of-work” mechanism, which requires significant computing power and energy consumption, before transitioning to “proof-of-stake” in September 2022.
Digital River is currently facing serious difficulties: the company filed for bankruptcy for its subsidiaries in Germany in January of this year, closed its headquarters in Minnesota, and suspended most of its global operations.
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