Ohio Man Charged for Allegedly Hijacking Cloud Providers’ Resources to Mine $1 Million in Crypto

Assistant US Attorneys Andrew Reich and Artie McConnell have charged Charles O. Parks III, of Nebraska, for allegedly defrauding two companies that provided cloud computing services by using their resources to mine cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency mining used to be all the rage, but that’s no longer the case for regular consumers because the energy required is too costly without specialized computing hardware.

It’s also one of the reasons criminals try to deploy mining software on compromised machines, basically hijacking them to mine and consume the victims’ resources.

Parks, also going by the online moniker CP3O, allegedly devised a clever method to have someone else pay for mining cryptocurrency, in this case, two well-known providers of cloud computing services.

“As alleged, by hijacking cloud providers’ computing power, Parks stole millions worth of powerful computing resources to acquire cryptocurrency,” stated the US Attorney’s Office. “This Office will continue to prioritize prosecuting criminal actors who use new, sophisticated technology to engage in the old scheme of fraud and deceit.”

According to the indictment, Parks created and used a variety of names, corporate affiliations and email addresses to register multiple accounts with cloud providers, allowing him to access massive amounts of computing processing power and storage he didn’t pay for. He’s accused of defrauding the companies of more than $3.5 million worth of computing resources, which netted him almost $1 million.

“Parks converted and laundered the cryptocurrency proceeds through cryptocurrency exchanges, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, an online payment provider, and traditional bank accounts, in order to disguise the audit trail and disassociate the funds from the fraud,” the indictment press release also states.

If convicted, Parks faces a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment for wire fraud and money laundering and another 10 for unlawful monetary transaction charges.