In May 2021, the crypto.com platform, a Singaporean company that operates with cryptocurrencies, whether to buy, sell, make payments or invest, mistakenly transferred $10.5 million to Thevamanogari Manivel, a woman residing in Melbourne, Australia, when in reality, your deposit should have been $100. After seven months, the company realized her mistake and, wanting to recover her money, the woman had already “invested” it.
The platform has cards that work in a very similar way to bank cards, with the difference that it allows you to top up the balance with digital currencies. According to the information published Guardiancrypto.com’s mistake was that they put the woman’s account number in the field where the payment amount should be placed.
At first, the company was not aware of this and the Australian company did not report it. However, seven months later, crypto.com was facing an audit when it noticed the millionaire transfer. For this reason, at the beginning of this 2022, the platform was forced to take legal action against Manivel, since he refused to return the money.
In addition to this, the woman not only withdrew the entire sum from the platform, but also sent most of the amount to other accounts, which were also frozen.
But that’s not all, because Manivel also used part of the money to buy a house that he put in the name of his sister, who lives in Malaysia. In this movement he spent more than 1.3 million dollars, which the Court required him to recover when selling the property, as well as to deliver around 20 percent of the amount to cover interest and costs.
But how was he able to exchange these digital currencies for real money and spend it? By storing the cryptocurrencies in the digital wallet, he only requested a sell order and when he executed it, the real money appeared in his bank account. For this reason, the platform also began a legal process against the people involved, that is, those who received the transfers.
At first, the Australian stayed out of this, ignoring the emails that crypto.com sent her. However, her lawyers have already given an answer. We’ll keep abreast of what happens in the case, but what would you have done? Would you have reported the bug?