The discovery of a clandestine cryptocurrency mining farm in a remote area of Puebla has opened a new line of inquiry into large-scale electricity theft in Mexico. Puebla’s Public Security Secretariat said the main crime under investigation is energy theft and that authorities will expand their inquiries to neighboring municipalities in search of similar facilities. The announcement follows the dismantling of an operation consisting of some 300 computers used to mine digital assets that had been illegally connected to a dam forming part of a federal hydroelectric complex.

Francisco Sánchez, head of the state agency, said Monday that the mining farm was located in the municipality of Tlaola, in the northern highlands of Puebla, a small…