Gaming company E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) has admitted to charges brought against it by the New Jersey Attorney General's office regarding the installation of a Bitcoin miner on its customers' computers.
Last May, we reported on the ESEA scam that, along with its software, installed a hidden Bitcoin miner on customers' computers to mine Bitcoins from their CPU. At the time, the company admitted that it had conducted some internal testing with its software, but claimed to have stopped it.
However, an employee decided to continue the fraud on his own and managed to make a few thousand dollars until users began complaining that the company's software was using far too many resources from their systems. The compromised application had been installed on 14,000 computers.
The company apologized and donated the money to the American Anti-Cancer Society. The employee in question was later reported.
Today the company agreed to pay a fine of $1 million(€740,000). Of this amount, ESEA will only have to actually pay $325,000 and the rest only if it starts distributing software with hidden features again.
