Crypto.com plaintiff uses after refunding $10 million instead of $100

Exchange platform Crypto.com is reeling from a costly mistake after accidentally refunding an Australian woman an amount far higher than she expected.

The woman, based in Melbourne, applied for a $100 refund from the exchange last May but received $10 million, the Daily Mail reported.

Crypto.com didn’t realize the error until seven months later, during a year-end audit, according to the outlet.

The Singapore-headquartered exchange legally pursued the user to recover the money, informing the court that the error occurred because an account number was entered in the payment field, instead of the originally requested amount, the report said.

But by the time Crypto.com realized what was happening, $10 million had already gone towards a multi-million dollar mansion in the Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn, complete with home theater and gym.

The women do not escape easily. A judge has now reportedly ordered their property to be sold and the exchange’s money to be repaid.

Crypto.com is likely to win in court as it is a well-established company, but this will serve as a warning to other companies, according to Alexander Tkachenko, CEO of asset tokenization platform VNX.

“While random errors occur on most platforms, this one is too costly to ignore,” he told Blockworks. Representatives for Crypto.com did not return requests for comment by press time.

Crypto.com was founded in 2016 in Hong Kong and has over 50 million active users, according to the company.

The fiasco mirrors a similar incident that took place around the same time last year.

Crypto lender BlockFi mistakenly deposited millions of dollars worth of bitcoin into a number of user accounts in May 2021, when the asset was trading around $49,000.

Staff had accidentally processed payments in BTC instead of the stablecoin USDC. In a chirpingBlockFi said some customers who participated in a trade promotion would see inaccurate bonus payouts.

CEO Zac Prince said the firm sent a “few hundred” in bitcoin to less than 100 users. Reports of legal threats against the recipients later surfaced.

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