E-Sports Entertainment, a gaming company that earlier this year admitted to using customer computers to mine Bitcoins, has reached a settlement for $1 million.
The New Jersey Attorney General’s offices announced the settlement November 19.
The company mined Bitcoins on customer computers over the course of two weeks in April, netting 29 BTC. The dollar equivalent was then donated to the American Cancer Society.
This was done by including code in game software that allowed E-Sports to monitor end-users’ computers. This included file access, screen grabs and monitor activity.
The settlement also notes that the company also copied files from end users, which the attorney general said was a violation of consumer and computer abuse laws.
The company’s software cost customers $6.95. When resources on the end users’ computers were free, Bitcoin mining was activated.
The company claimed back in May to have tried the scheme out as an experiment on consenting administrators’ computers, but that had rouge employee took it “for his own personal gain.”