An erroneous transfer of USD 650,000 is a big mistake. It's worse when it turns out that the recipient of the transfer has disappeared with the money. The OTCPro platform is struggling with such problems, as it mistakenly sent as much as USD 650,000 in cryptocurrencies to Australian Kwo Seng Chai. The Australian disappeared like a stone into water, and all circumstantial evidence indicates that he was not idle and used the funds already transferred to him.
Transfer for USD 650,000 and no contact with the recipient
Everyone makes mistakes, but in the case of the cryptocurrency industry, they can be exceptionally spectacular due to their scale. While a transfer of several hundred or even several thousand zlotys is not a big deal, the failure of the Australian OTCPro cryptocurrency exchange owned by Rhino Trading is a monumental blunder. Instead of the intended USD 65,300, the stock exchange sent as much as ten times as much to Australian businessman Kwo Seng Chai. The transfer for USD 650,000 turned out to be a human error resulting from incorrectly entering the transaction amount.
The stock exchange found out about the gigantic mistake on February 4 and wanted to quickly undo the matter. However, it turned out that recovering over half a million USD in cryptocurrencies would not be such an easy task. The stock exchange tried to contact the “lucky person” both by phone and e-mail, but the businessman did not respond to messages left.
It quickly turned out that Chai used the vast majority of the funds to purchase the Tether cryptocurrency and then withdrew USD 627,000, thus using the daily withdrawal limit. The case went to court, which froze the businessman's assets and issued a ban on leaving the country on February 21, but no trace of the businessman was lost, as was the transfer for USD 650,000.
Mistaken transfers do happen in the cryptocurrency industry!
Although the OTCPro platform's mistake seems to be a disaster of all time, mistaken transfers in the cryptocurrency industry are not new and unheard of. Just two years ago, the Crypto.com exchange mistakenly sent as much as USD 6.86 million to the account of an Australian couple from Melbourne. The couple was supposed to get only USD 100 refunded to their account. The couple quickly decided to smoothen the smile of fate by buying houses, luxury cars and expensive gifts for their loved ones. After a long court battle, one of the spouses was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, while the other is to appear in court in March this year.
