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An Australian crypto exchange is attempting to recover approximately $328,000 from a user’s account after a significant error occurred while crediting the account. According to news by ABC News based on court documents, OTCPro, owned by Rhino Trading, accidentally deposited $653,000 into a user’s account in January instead of the intended $65,300.
Court Decision Attracts Attention
After realizing the mistake on February 4th, the exchange team claimed that the user, Kow Seng Chai, did not respond to emails to return the funds. Court documents also allege that the user used part of the mistakenly sent funds to purchase Tether and withdrew approximately $626,700 in daily maximum lots of $100,000 from the exchange within 10 days.
Rhino Trading also claims that a person who answered a phone call to the number linked to the account stated it was not Chai’s number. Chai also did not appear in court. On February 9th, the Victoria State Supreme Court froze the man’s assets and on February 21st, issued an injunction to prevent him from leaving the country.
Judge Michael Osborne, while issuing the decisions to freeze Chai’s assets and prevent him from leaving Australia, mentioned a real risk of the assets being disposed of and took into account that the bank account statements may not be genuine.
What’s Happening at the Crypto Exchange?
Meanwhile, the exchange claims to have suffered a loss of approximately $322,700, which is the remaining account balance minus the total of the mistakenly sent funds. The mistake by the OTCPro team occurred two and a half years after a similar error by Crypto com with one of its users.
In May 2021, Crypto com sent $6.86 million to a Melbourne couple, Thevamanogari Manivel and Jatinder Singh, instead of a $100 refund, following an employee’s alleged mistake of entering an account number into the payment section of an Excel spreadsheet.
The couple claimed they believed the money was a reward and went on a spending spree buying houses, cars, and gifts for family members. Manivel was sentenced to an 18-month community correction order in September 2023, while Singh is set to appear in a Melbourne court for his case in March.
