Australian prosecutors seek jail time for users who received large, erroneous refunds from Crypto.com

Australian prosecutors are seeking a jail term for a Crypto.com user who accidentally received a nearly $7 million erroneous refund and spent most of it before the exchange discovered an internal error three years ago. In May 2021, Crypto.com mistakenly sent a $6.86 million (A$10.47 million) refund to Australian couple Thevamanogari Manivel and Jatinder Singh instead of a $100 refund. The reason was that an employee allegedly entered an account number in the payment section of an Excel spreadsheet, and the exchange detected that the bank account did not match the exchange account. As a result, the exchange issued a refund, but instead of returning the A$100 the couple had attempted to deposit, the exchange mistakenly wired A$10.5 million to Manivel's bank account. Just seven months later, when the exchange discovered the error during an internal audit in December 2021, the user had already purchased multiple homes and gifted a friend A$1 million. He claimed to have thought he had won an "online lottery." Australian prosecutors have argued that jail time remains a real possibility for Crypto.com users who received millions of dollars as a result of an insider mistake.