The famous cryptocurrency buying and selling platform CRYPTO.COM is at the center of an original case, to say the least. A “lucky” Australian user would have received a refund of 10.5 million Australian dollars (about 7.2 million dollars) instead of a transfer worth 68 dollars.
Such an error reminds me of the Monopoly game in which there was a chance card entitled: “Bank error in your favor, collect $200
This error occurred in May 2021 but was not discovered until seven months later after an audit of the platform. This also shows the serious auditing deficiencies of the Crypto.com platform.
If such a mistake had been made in your favor by Crypto.com or another cryptocurrency trading platform, what would you have done?
Would you have directly returned the overpayment to Crypto.com, or would you have decided to cover up the mistake? After all, to err is human ...
That's what this Australian user of the Crypto.com platform must have told herself because she didn't want to say anything after the mistake was made in her favor. After all, she must have thought that Crypto.com might never see it... She took a chance!
By the time Crypto.com noticed the mistake and contacted the user, she had already spent a large part of the money she received in error. After Crypto.com contacted the user Thevamanogari Manivel, holder of the account that collected $7.2M by mistake, here is the response: “Received, thanks.
Following this equivocal response, Crypto.com took the case to court to recover the money. The Supreme Court of Victoria decided to freeze the user's accounts, the first step in favor of Crypto.com.
At the time of the decision, the Australian from Melbourne had already transferred or spent a large part of the money, including the purchase of a house estimated at 1.3 million Australian dollars, given to her sister Thilagavathy Gadory.
In addition to freezing his accounts, the Australian Supreme Court also ordered Manivel to sell the house in question and to repay the money received, with interest estimated at $27,369.
Human error costs Crypto.com a lot of money
For the time being, the trial is on hold and will resume in October 2022 to put an end to this case, which Crypto.com is refusing to comment on at the moment. And for good reason, this error is due to a typing error during the refund to Thevamanogari Manivel.
An employee of the firm would have mistakenly typed the wrong amount to refund.
An error that echoes the one that OptiFi, another decentralized finance institution, recently experienced. A developer of the company accidentally activated a command that closed the whole program on which the platform is based and made $661,000 disappear. In this kind of case, it's not the volatility of the cryptocurrency market or scams, but a human error that can cause colossal losses for exchanges.
Because whether in the current system or the new world of cryptocurrencies, human error is always possible. Hence the interest in making regular audits, which Crypto.com must now do ...
In the meantime, this Melbourne resident whose life had changed because of this error sees her dream turn into a nightmare.
Now that I've told you this rather incredible story, I have a question for you: what would you have done in the place of Thevamanogari Manivel if an exchange platform had sent you several million dollars by mistake?
I look forward to your answers in the comments!
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