Australia to jail Cryptocom user who stole $6.09 million

Prosecutors are demanding jail time for Jatinder Singh, the 39-year-old guy who went on a spending spree after receiving millions of dollars due to a mistake by Crypto.com. 

This all started when Jatinder tried to deposit $100 into his Crypto.com account in May 2021 using his partner’s bank account. Due to mismatched names on the accounts, the deposit was rejected.

The house Jatinder bought with Crypto.com’s money. Credits: Realestate.com

What followed was a massive accounting error by a Bulgarian employee at Crypto.com. Instead of refunding the $100, the employee mistakenly sent $10.47 million to Jatinder’s partner’s account.

This colossal error went unnoticed for seven months. It wasn’t until December of that year that an internal audit by Crypto.com revealed the missing funds. By then, our boy Jatinder had already spent over $6 million of the money.

Spending the fortune

Jatinder faced the Victorian County Court on Friday for a presentence hearing after admitting to stealing. 

Prosecutor Campbell Thomson said that upon realizing the error, Jatinder instructed his partner, Thevamanogari Manivel, to withdraw the money to avoid the transaction being reversed.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – NCA NewsWire Photos – 18 DECEMBER, 2023: Jatinder Singh (right) leaves the County Court of Victoria after pleading guilty to the theft of more than $6m mistakenly refunded from Crypto.com in May 2021. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Liam Beatty

Jatinder later claimed he thought he had won an online raffle. In the following months, Jatinder and Manivel spent millions. They bought two homes and two blocks of land in Melbourne, and even gifted a friend $1 million. 

When Crypto.com discovered the mistake, they contacted Commonwealth Bank, which informed Manivel that the money needed to be returned. Manivel, believing the call was a scam, transferred $4 million to her Malaysian bank account.

Court arguments and sentencing

Manivel was arrested in March 2022 while attempting to board a flight to Malaysia with a one-way ticket. 

Jatinder’s attorney, Martin Kozlowski, told Judge Martine Marich that Jatinder now accepts the money was not his. Kozlowski argued that Jatinder did not fully grasp the gravity of his actions at the time.

Kozlowski emphasized that the funds came from a large multinational company that didn’t even notice the missing money until an audit months later. He said that:

“Nobody knows how they would respond if faced by the same situation.”

Kozlowski urged the court to consider Jatinder’s almost year-long remand and to place him on a community corrections order. He insisted that Jatinder is unlikely to reappear before the courts. 

Prosecutor Thomson, however, argued that a jail sentence is necessary for such opportunistic offending. 

“It may not be that you send him to jail for very long at all after taking into account his presentence detention.”

The court learned that Crypto.com had launched legal action to recover the money spent in Australia but did not share the outcome with prosecutors. 

Thomson said it’s likely most of the money in Australia had been recovered, but the $4 million in Malaysia remained unreturned.

Judge Marich remarked that Jatinder was no “criminal mastermind” and that the situation was extraordinary. “It was the proverbial bag of gold falling from the sky,” she said.

She will announce Jatinder’s sentence later this month.