An Australian man has vanished after allegedly pocketing about half a million dollars when cryptocurrency trading platform Rhino Trading Pty Ltd accidentally added an extra zero to his account, according to an ABC report.
The man who has been named as, Kow Seng Chai, has allegedly pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars after a cryptocurrency trading platform mistakenly credited his account with AUD $995,000 in (US $652,316) instead of AUD $99,500 (US $65,237.)
Rhino Trading Pty Ltd said Chai has failed to respond to requests to return the money. By the time the trading firm picked up the error on February 4, Chai had had used some of the funds to purchase Tether through an account set up by his business Lotte Enterprise Pty Ltd. He withdraw funds in multiple maximum daily instalments of US$100,000.
The 37-year old Mildura man has completely vanished and the Victorian Supreme Court has issued a “freezing order” on his assets and an injunction preventing him from leaving Australia.
This is not first time an error like this has occurred. Back in 2021, a Melbourne couple was set to face a plea trial for a theft charge after inadvertently receiving 10.5 million Australian dollars ($6.7 million) from Crypto.com. The couple, received the funds by mistake, and then proceeded to spend the money before the error was discovered, as reported by Ruholamin Haqshanas from Cryptonews.com.
The incident occurred in May 2021 when Thevamanogari Manivel made a transfer to her partner Jatinder Singh‘s Crypto.com account. The exchange identified that the bank account did not match the exchange account, and thus issued a refund.
Instead of an AUD $100 ($67) refund, however, it accidentally sent AUD $10.5 million (worth over $7 million) to
Read more on cryptonews.com