Crypto.com Sues User After Refunding $10M Instead of $100

Exchange platform Crypto.com is reeling from an expensive mistake after accidentally refunding an Australian woman an amount way higher than she expected. 

The woman, based in Melbourne, sought a $100 refund from the exchange in May last year, but received $10 million, Daily Mail reported.

Crypto.com didn’t realize the error until seven months later, during an end-of-year audit, according to the outlet. 

The Singapore-headquartered exchange legally pursued the user to recover the money, informing the court that the blunder happened because an account number was entered the payment field, instead of the initially requested amount, the report said.

But by the time Crypto.com realized what happened, the $10 million had already gone towards a multi-million dollar mansion in the Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn, complete with a home cinema and gym.

The women are not getting away easily. A judge has now reportedly ordered their property be sold and for the exchange’s money to be paid back.

Crypto.com will likely win in court as it’s a well-established company, but this will serve as a cautionary tale for other companies, according to Alexander Tkachenko, CEO of asset tokenization platform VNX.

“While random errors occur on most platforms, this one is too costly to ignore,” he told Blockworks. Representatives for Crypto.com didn’t return request for comment by press time. 

Crypto.com was founded in 2016 in Hong Kong and counts over 50 million active users, according to the company.

The fiasco echoes a similar event that took place around the same time last year.

Crypto lender BlockFi mistakenly deposited bitcoin worth millions of dollars to a number of user accounts in May 2021, when the asset traded around $49,000. 

Staff had accidentally processed payments in BTC rather than stablecoin USDC. In a tweet, BlockFi said some clients who participated in a trading promotion would see inaccurate bonus payments. 

CEO Zac Prince said the firm sent a “couple hundred” in bitcoin to less than 100 users. Reports of legal threats to the recipients later surfaced.

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