Aussie family accidentally gets $10 million refund instead of $100 and now they have to pay it back

An Australian family is being forced to pay back every cent after cryptocurrency trader Crypto.com accidentally transferred them $10.4 million instead of $100.

Melbourne resident Thevamanogari Manivel was on the end of perhaps the biggest surprise of her life last year when $10,474,143 showed up in her bank account.

She had been waiting on a $100 refund from Crypto.com. 

Despite it seeming like a gift from some sort of spiritual being, it was instead a massive payout error from the Singapore-based trading platform. 

Seemanta Dutta / Alamy

While everyone has heard the horror stories involving crypto scams and losing out on tonnes of funds, this payout was on the entire other end of the spectrum.

That was until the dream turned into a nightmare and the platform caught onto its mistake.

During an audit seven months later, Crypto.com discovered their error and began legal proceedings to get their money back, according to news.com.au.

The kicker: Manivel and her family members had already spent a lot of the money.

Ms Manivel had gifted cash to six other people, including family members, such as her daughter and sister.

The crypto platform, which sponsors the AFL to the tune of $25 million a year, looked for repercussions for the seven recipients. 

Crypto.com won the proceedings and the court ordered all the money to be paid back plus an additional 10 per cent interest, on top of legal costs.

However, according to The Australian, the defendant had pushed back for evidence that the funds had been paid ‘by mistake’. 

Crypto.com had managed to get Ms Manivel’s accounts frozen in February, however, by then most of the money had already gone to other accounts

Her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory, purchased a $1.35 million Melbourne house just two weeks after the assets had been suspended. 

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That four-bedroom home will have to be sold under the judge’s orders. 

Judge James Elliot stated, via news.com.au: “It is established that the Craigieburn Property was acquired with funds traceable to the wrongful Payment and would never have been in Gangadory’s hands if the wrongful payment had not been made.

“Thus, Gangadory was unjustly enriched by receiving the purchase price of the Craigieburn property out of the wrongful payment…”

The court ordered interest to be paid on top of what needed to be given back.

Commonwealth Bank was also listed as a defendant in the case, however, no ‘substantive final relief’ was issued against the bank. 

There were no representatives of Gangadory in attendance in the court, so the verdict is still open to be challenged. 

Other orders have been made in other cases related to the transferred funds, however, they are currently before the courts and cannot be disclosed. 

Even when they make a mistake the crypto companies still manage to come out on top.