You remember what Matt Damon said in that ambitious TV commercial for Crypto.com earlier this year: “fortune favors the brave.” But where most people just watched the commercial, one woman in Australia reportedly lived it, after she accidentally got a payment of $10 million from the cryptocurrency platform, immediately splitting it between herself and six loved ones and buying a mansion.
News.com.au reports that Crypto.com intended to send Thevamanogari Manivel of Melbourne, Australia a refund for $100 in May of 2021. Instead, a technical error resulted in a payment of $10,474,143, and even more incredibly, no one at the company noticed what had happened until a routine audit at the end of the year. So they went after Manivel to get the money back, eventually filing a lawsuit in Australian court.
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Everyone dreams about what they would do with a sudden unexpected infusion of wealth into our bank account, but Manivel actually got to put those dreams into action, splitting the money with her six closest associates and buying an ultra-modern $1.35 million mansion in Melbourne with four bedrooms and four bathrooms under her sister’s name. Crypto.com took everyone who got a piece of the pie to court in February of this year, and eventually got an injunction to freeze Manivel and her sister’s personal bank accounts.
Now, a judge has ruled that Manivel and co. have to reimburse Crypto.com for the money, plus their legal fees and 10 percent interest, which comes to an additional $27,369.64. The judge is also ruling that the mansion be sold in order to pay off the debt, and it doesn’t seem to be clear exactly how much of the money they still have. But even if they end up financially worse off than when they started, at least they have a pretty good story to tell, and maybe one day Matt Damon will add them to the ranks of heroes like Ferdinand Magellan and Marco Polo, who dared to attempt the impossible.