Crypto.com, a Cryptocurrency trading platform accidentally transferred a woman in Australia $10.5m when processing a $100 refund. The firm sent the refund to Thevamanogari Manivel’s bank account back on May 20th, 2021, but failed to notice the error until an audit was performed seven months later after the funds were transferred. But by then the woman had already gone on a spending spree and had bought a $1.35m five-bedroom house in Melbourne.
Thevamanogari had already sent the funds to her sister Thilagavathy Gangadory with whom she had a joint account, according to court documents. The Crypto company that paid Hollywood star Matt Damon to feature in a Super Bowl commercial with the slogan “fortune favors the brave” realized what it had done after seven months but Miss Manivel had already invested the money in real estate.
Thevamanogari bought a whopping $1.35 million mansion in Melbourne. She later transferred the ownership of the mansion to her sister Thilagavathy Gangadory in Malaysia. A month prior to her purchase she had transferred $430,000 to Raveena Vijan her daughter.
The Crypto company operating as Foris GFS in Australia has now launched legal action against Thevamanogari Manivel in the Victorian supreme court this year. The court granted a freeze on Manivel’s Commonwealth Bank account in February, but most of the money had been transferred to other accounts which were later frozen by the banks. The court has also ordered Gangodory to sell the mansion and return $1.35 million to the company along with an interest of $27,000.
“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,” Justice James Elliott said as he noted down his judgment.
“Thus, Gangadory was unjustly enriched by receiving the purchase price of the Craigieburn property out of the wrongful payment … Accordingly, I was satisfied that the orders relating to the sale of the Craigieburn property were appropriate.”
Justice Elliott passed a default judgement after Ms Manivel reportedly failed to show, saying that “references to the facts of this case based on such uncontested evidence are necessarily open to challenge if Gangadory ever seeks to set aside the default judgment”.
