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My friends, be honest, if someone accidentally gives you millions of dollars when they only owed you $100, would you tap them on the shoulder and say, hey, you probably overpaid me or will you go screaming all the way to the bank? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that behind our keyboards, thinking theoretically, we'd all do the honest thing. Reality might be another matter.
Like the woman over in Melbourne, Australia, who in 2021, according to the Daily Mail, reportedly sought a $100 refund from crypto exchange CRYPTO.COM and was given close to $10.5 million instead. In we money. Get it? US... we? Okay, maybe I should lay off on the jokes. I get it.
But, you may wonder, how could an exchange make such a huge mistake? Well, as reports go, when the exchange was issuing the refund, an account number was entered in the payment field, instead of the requested amount. It was as simple as that.
And the woman, Thevamanogari Manivel, woke up to Christmas in May. Bitcoin was going on a massive bull run, Crypto.com had just unwittingly gifted her $10 million, everything was right with the world. And so, our good sis took the bank route, all right? She moved $10.1 million to a different account, transferred $430,000 to her daughter. And then Ms. Manivel splurged out. She made it rain.
She built a huge mansion complete with five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a home cinema and a gym. The house is gorgeous. Built according to a modern style. It belongs in a magazine. It was so beautiful, in fact, I added it to my Pinterest mood board to build when my crypto investments pay off, all right? The pictures are copyright though, so I'll just leave this here courtesy so you can get the idea.
Anyways, friends, Manivel had a blast, and was running around free for seven months before the exchange recognized the discrepancy and sued for the money. By then, of course, Manivel didn't have the money. Or she had hidden it well. And so, there was just the house, which she had registered in her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory's name.
The court, however, wasn't having the obfuscation. And so, finding for Crypto.com, Judge James Dudley Elliott of the Supreme Court of Victoria ordered that the house be sold so that the exchange could recover its money. Or at least a portion of it.
Incidentally, the team at Blockworks recall a similar incident also in May 2021- a giddy time in crypto it seems- when crypto lender, BlockFi mistakenly deposited Bitcoin worth millions to some user accounts for clients who had participated in a trading promotion. It seems the team paid BTC instead of USDC as it was supposed to. And, suffice to say, some users were initially quite giddy to see their accounts. But then BlockFi moved to recover the incorrectly awarded funds and there were Twitter posts like this:
And so, friends, I ask again. What would you do if you're incidentally paid millions when you're only due a couple hundreds? I'd love to see your responses.
Well, I'm off again in search of another story. Until we meet again, please remember to be safe. We'll chat soon.
