Much and all as it is fashionable to complain about Google now, sometimes the algorithm gets it just right. Over the weekend, my feed served me this headline: Man who was accidentally paid 330 times his salary quits and disappears (Unilad, 19 July 2024). Perhaps it is not my usual sort of news source, but it is certainly my usual sort of news – it is another example of mistaken overpayments on which I have regularly commented on this blog. As I have observed in that context, many have often adopted the approach of one of the white mice (who were, in fact, hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings) in Douglas Adams‘ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979): when faced with a choice between doing the right thing, “and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise”.

That is precisely what the overpaid employee did here. A Chilean meat-producer, Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos (Cial), sent a payment of CLP$165,398,851 (€160,283) to him, instead of his usual salary of CLP$500,000 (€485). It is a bizarre amount of overpayment; usually, a payment is made twice, or additional digits are added to a payment; but there is no obvious connection between the amounts of the salary and the overpayment here; it may be that the larger amount was meant for another account, or that somebody just entered a wrong random number.…

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A little while ago on this blog, I noted the mistaken payment case of Foris GFS Australia Pty Ltd v Manivel [2022] VSC 482 (26 August 2022). It has been a recurring theme of my notes on these kinds of cases that the recipients of mistaken payments not only must make restitution of those payments, but also that they run the risk of criminal prosecution. Now comes the unsurprising news that the key recipients of the money at issue in Foris v Manivel have indeed been charged with theft:

Couple mistakenly given $10.5m from Crypto.com thought they had won contest, court hears

Money from crypto exchange was allegedly used to buy four houses worth $4m, vehicles, art and furniture, police officer tells court

A Victorian woman accused of theft over a $10.5m mistaken cryptocurrency refund has been released on bail as she awaits trial, despite claims she allegedly tried to flee the country. Thevamanogari Manivel and her partner, Jatinder Singh, appeared by video link from prison in Melbourne magistrates court on Tuesday when they were committed to stand trial on theft and other charges. …

The Crypto.com account was in Singh’s name but the transfer may have been sent to Manivel’s account as he used her bank card to buy cryptocurrency, the court heard.

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To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer, so we are told. And it gets really dreadful indeed when computer buzzwords like “crypto” get included. And so it is with cryptocurrency trading platform, Crypto.com. In May 2021, it accidentally transferred Aus$10.5m [€7.35m; US$7m; St£6.3m] to an Australian woman, Thevamanogari Manivel, when processing an Aus$100 [€70; US$67; St£60] refund. Although computers were involved, the problem was plain old human error: Manivel’s account number had been accidentally entered into the “payment amount” field. Worse, they failed to notice the error until the following December, seven months later, by which time much of the money had already been given away to six other family members or spent on various luxury purchases, including an Aus$1.35m [€945,000; US$900,000; St£810,000] home in Craigieburn, Melbourne, for her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory. [Update: Crypto has company – a Texas bank made the same mistake to deposit US$37m in a customer’s account; but, unlike here, the Texas customer alerted the bank and returned the money].

This sounds like a classic exam question, but it is in fact the scenario faced by Elliott J in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, in Foris GFS Australia Pty Ltd v Manivel [2022] VSC 482 (26 August 2022).…

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