Crypto Exchange Sues Woman Who Misused $7.2M Refund • The Register
An Australian woman has been sued after she received part of an erroneous refund from a cryptocurrency exchange – mistaken for five zeros – that it didn’t notice for seven months.
Documents from the Supreme Court of Victoria reveal that plaintiffs Foris GFS Australia Pty Ltd and Foris AU Pty Ltd, the corporate entities that operate Crypto.com, brought claims against eight defendants in relation to an erroneous payment to Thevamanogari Manivel.
In May 2021, $US10.5 million ($7.2 million) was transferred to Manivel’s account “after an account number was accidentally entered in the payment amount field by a representative of the second claimant,” the court documents said. “Extraordinarily, the plaintiffs allegedly did not realize this significant error until some seven months later, in late December 2021.”
The intended amount was A$100 (approx. $68.50).
However, the court heard that during this time, instead of informing Crypto.com of the error, Manivel had allegedly paid out the fortune to six other people – including in the form of a A$1.35 million ($924,743) four-bedroom, four -bathroom house in the Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn as a “gift” to her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory, who lives in Malaysia.
From February 2022, Foris sought to freeze Manivel’s account with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which was also named as a defendant, “but no real final relief was sought against it.” This led to the other accounts that had received money from Manivel also being frozen, one of which was the daughter’s.
The plaintiffs alleged that the Craigieburn house was purchased solely with funds from the wrongful payment. Two weeks after Manivel’s assets were frozen, Gangadory was made the registered owner of the property.
Attempts were made to freeze Gangadory’s account, but these failed because she never responded to emails from the plaintiffs’ legal team. The only communication confirming the proceedings was an email response to Manivel’s lawyers that said: “Received, thank you.”
No representative for Gangadory appeared in court, so Judge Elliott issued a default judgment Friday that said Gangadory must sell the house and return the proceeds, pay interest for the time she held the money, plus costs.
He said: “It has been established that the Craigieburn property was acquired with funds traceable to the wrongful payment and would never have been in Gangadory’s hands had the wrongful payment not been made.
“Thus, Gangadory was unjustly enriched by receiving the purchase price for the Craigieburn property from the wrongful payment… Accordingly, I was satisfied that the orders relating to the sale of the Craigieburn property were appropriate.”
The court documents provided “an order that Gangadory pay interest to the first plaintiff calculated from March 1, 2022 to the date of judgment … Applying the statutory interest rate payable on judgment debt, which is 10 percent, the sum of $27,369 .64 awarded.”
Several orders have been issued against the other defendants who received money from Manivel to get the full amount back. ®
