An Australian crypto exchange has reportedly been trying to claw back nearly $328,000 from one of its users after a huge fat-finger error when crediting the account.
According to ABC News citing court documents, Rhino Trading, which owns the exchange OTCPro, accidentally credited a user with $653,000 (995,000 Australian dollars) in January — instead of the $65,300 (99,500 Australian dollars), due to an error.
The exchange, owned by Rhino Trading, claims that after it realized its mistake on Feb. 4, the user — Kow Seng Chai — hasn't responded to emails to return the funds.
Court documents also claim the user has allegedly used some of the mistakenly sent funds to purchase Tether (USDT) and withdraw from the exchange in lots of $100,000 — the maximum daily cap, ending up withdrawing about $626,700 (956,000 Australian dollars) over the ten days.
Rhino Trading also alleges that in one phone call to the number linked to his account, the person who answered said it was not Chai’s number. Chai was also a no-show in court.
The Supreme Court of the state of Victoria has since frozen the man’s assets on Feb. 9 and issued an injunction on Feb. 21 to stop the man from leaving the country.
Justice Michael Osborne said there’s a “real risk of assets being disposed of” and accounted for the inauthenticity of the bank statements when he made the orders to freeze Chai’s assets and block him from leaving Australia.
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Meanwhile the exchange has claimed a loss of nearly $322,700 — Chai’s remaining account balance minus the sum of its wrongly sent funds.
OTCPro’s error comes over two and a half years since Crypto.com made a similar error with one of its users.
After a lawsuit filed in the Victoria Supreme Court, a judge ruled that the funds should be returned to https://t.co/ZzXTzGJbJx. https://t.co/1WKtd6HUlf
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) September 24, 2023
In May 2021, Crypto.com sent $6.86 million (10.47 million Australian dollars) to Melbourne couple Thevamanogari Manivel and Jatinder Singh instead of a $100 refund after a worker allegedly typed an account number into the payment section of an Excel spreadsheet.
The couple claimed they believed it was prize money and allegedly went on a spending spree, buying houses, cars and gifts for family members.
Manivel was sentenced to to an 18-month community corrections order in September 2023 while Singh will face a hearing for his case in a Melbourne court in March.
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