More than 60 tenants and shop owners found themselves faced with millions of dollars of debt after their homes were used by tenants as illegal Bitcoin mining grounds.

In a press conference yesterday, the Gopeng MP Tan Kar Hing revealed that their service centres had received more than 60 of such reports from home owners who have suffered a very similar fate. Each of these claims received ranges from RM30,000 to RM1.2 million.

Many tenants leeched on the loopholes in the Malaysian Electrical Supply Act, which dictates that the Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) is able to claim compensation from home owners without having to prove they were the person who was behind the electricity theft.

This legal loophole grants tenants to use the electricity of the home owners for illegal activity while throwing the financial burden of the electric bills to their owners.

Malaysian lackluster legal framework causing home owners to suffer

Such is the case of one Yeh Pit Yun, who is currently pressured by the TNB to pay a whopping RM1.2 million electricity bills that were used by her tenant.

Yun explained that she rented out the upper floor of her two storey shop lot to a tenant in July while she operated her hair salon on the ground floor. On one occasion, she noticed that her tenant had carried a large bag of thick electrical cables upstairs, which caused her to raise suspicion and lodge a police report.

Before the police could arrive, her tenant mysteriously disappeared. Yen recalled noticing holes in the walls and damaged partitions, which pointed to signs of illegal crypto mining. Yeh shares that she is currently at the mercy of the Gopeng MP and hopes he can help her to resolve the debt issue.

Illegal cryptocurrency mining is also known to cause sudden power outages due to the high electrical usage consumed during the mining process, resulting in losses not only for home owners, but also the TNB and the country.

Electrical thefts putting strain on the countries Economy

The Energy transition and Water Transformation Deputy Minister Akmal Nasrullah Nohd Nasir revealed that while the power loss from electrical theft only constitutes a small fraction of the country's electrical consumption, but these losses still stack up and have a significant financial impact on the country and electrical sector.

He stated that the total amount of money lost from electricity theft could even stack up to billions of dollars. He adds that the country started to increasingly lose more and more money from such illegal activities after the inception of bitcoin mining back in 2018.

Many bad actors have also resorted to tampering with meters and illegal electrical connections as their strategy to steal electricity, which has caused the country to lose close to $200 million every year. While many criminals believe that they can avoid detection by not using meters, but the TNB is actively monitoring excessive energy usage to spot all the potential "crime scenes."

The Malaysian government has also recently seized disposed electrical items, including bitcoin machines and electrical appliances without Energy Commission-Sirim safety labels to investigate deeper into these crimes.