According to legal filings, the receiver spent a portion of the money after receiving it to purchase a lavish mansion.
Two Melbourne women, Manivel Thevamanogari and her sister Gangadory Thevamanogari received an AUD$10.5 million deposit from Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com after the latter made a mistake in providing an AUD$100 refund, according to local news source 7News.
An employee allegedly entered an account number in the payment box rather than the return amount, causing an incorrect transfer to their bank account.
The incident happened in May 2021, but it wasn’t detected until a December 2021 yearly audit. The money must now be given back to the company the Victoria Supreme Court ordered following the filing of a case.
Manivel, it turns out, has already spent AUD$1.35 million on a five-bedroom luxury apartment in Craigieburn, so apparently, not all of the money was saved up.
She was given the go-ahead and sell the lavish mansion to pay back the money, or she would face contempt of court charges. The case will once again be heard in court in October.
Following are Justin Lawrence’s remarks on the subject from Henderson and Ball Lawyers:
There’s no question that if you saw that in your account, you would know it shouldn’t be there. It’s your responsibility to contact the sender and communicate that shouldn’t have entered your account.
Centralized financial institutions have the ability to undo mistakes in transactions, in contrast to crypto transactions, which are final and irreversible.
A straightforward transaction reversal would not have been possible in this case due to the period of time it took to identify the mistake and the fact that the money from Crypto.com was transferred out of the original account after the payment was made.
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