Ex-Digital River Employee Sentenced for Yearlong Ethereum Cryptojacking Scheme

A Minnesota man, Joshua Paul Armbrust, 45, was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $45,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to a felony computer fraud charge for cryptojacking his former employer's systems to mine Ethereum.

Armbrust, who resigned from Digital River in February 2020, continued to use his Amazon Web Services (AWS) access to mine ETH daily from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. for over a year, earning approximately $5,895 in Ethereum while incurring $45,270 in server costs for the company.

Assistant US Attorney Bradley Endicott stated that the conduct "strikes at the core of digital trust and security" and was a "calculated and covert misuse of enterprise-level computing resources for private enrichment." The scheme was uncovered during an internal investigation in January, traced to Armbrust's IP address.

Defense attorney William Mauzy argued that Armbrust acted out of desperation to care for his terminally ill mother, not greed, and he did not attempt to hide his actions, which contributed to his light sentence without incarceration.