An Australian woman bought her sister home with some of the accidentally-sent funds to her cryptocurrency account.
The incident happen, when Australian woman Thevamanogari Manivel put in a Crypto.com refund request last year, she got far more than she bargained for. The huge error occurred back in May 2021 and it then took crypto.com more than seven months to realize the error.
After realizing the error, Crypto.com immediately launched legal action against the woman and her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory.
Manivel asked for a refund of $100 AUD (now worth around $68 USD). Instead, seemingly due to an employee entering her account number into a payment section of a refund form by mistake, the company dropped $10.5 million AUD ($7.2 million at current exchange rates) into her account instead.
The recipient, Manivel, didn’t notify Crypto.com, instead allegedly transferring funds to bank accounts held by her and her family. Crypto.com claims Manivel used the money to buy her sister a modern million-dollar house, complete with a home gym and theater.
According to reports, Manivel reportedly transferred the funds to multiple bank accounts. A court granted Crypto.com a freeze on the account in February. The Guardian reports that most of the cash had been moved to other accounts by then, but those accounts were later frozen too.
Here’s what lawyers for Crypto.com wrote in the lawsuit.
“It is established that the Craigieburn Property was acquired with funds traceable to the Wrongful Payment and would never have been in Gangadory’s hands if the wrongful payment had not been made. Thus, Gangadory was unjustly enriched by receiving the purchase price of the Craigieburn Property out of the Wrongful Payment, and the first plaintiff is entitled to recover an amount representing that price.”
The case is set to return to court in October and court documents state that Gangadory was “seeking legal advice.”
“There’s no doubt that if you saw that in your account you would know it shouldn’t be there, and the onus is actually on you to actually call the sender and to say look that shouldn’t have come into my account,” Justin Lawrence, a partner at Henderson and Ball lawyers, said.
“If you’re withholding property of someone else you’re effectively holding property by deception, you’re not entitled to it, you need to give it back.”
Sources: AWM, The Guardian
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