Bithumb won back-to-back cases in unjust enrichment suits filed against users who sold bitcoin that had been mistakenly paid out during a customer event in February. This is the second first-instance ruling among the four separate suits Bithumb filed against users to recover uncollected sale proceeds.
On the 27th, Kim Yu-seong, a single-judge civil court judge of the Seoul Central District Court's Civil Division 90, ruled for the plaintiff in Bithumb's lawsuit seeking the return of unjust enrichment against a user identified as A. The amount in dispute is 194,000,443 won.
According to the Seoul Central District Court, the case proceeded by public notice service. Public notice service is a procedure in which documents are deemed served through methods such as court postings when the other party's address or workplace is unknown, making it difficult to deliver court papers by ordinary means.
Earlier, on the 26th, the Seoul Central District Court also ruled for the plaintiff in another lawsuit by Bithumb seeking the return of unjust enrichment against a different user. The amount in dispute in that case is 4,989,990 won, and it also proceeded by public notice service. As a result, first-instance rulings have been issued in two of the four related suits Bithumb filed.
On Feb. 6, Bithumb mistakenly paid compensation in bitcoin instead of won during a customer event reward process. The total mistakenly paid bitcoin was 620,000 units. According to financial authorities, after recognizing the error Bithumb blocked transactions and withdrawals and recovered 618,214 units before any transaction. For the 1,786 units that had already been sold, it carried out separate recovery procedures.
Bithumb subsequently filed separate unjust enrichment suits in March against four users who sold the mistakenly paid bitcoin and did not return the sale proceeds. Under the Civil Act, unjust enrichment is a system that requires a person who gains a benefit from another's property or labor without legal grounds, thereby causing a loss to the other party, to return that benefit.
Of the four cases, two have yet to see rulings. The claimed amounts are about 500 million won and 14.8 million won, respectively. Because each case may differ in the defendant's response and specific facts, it is difficult to conclude the remaining cases solely based on the earlier rulings.
The mispayment incident also led to stronger internal controls at virtual asset exchanges. The Financial Services Commission in April proposed system improvements requiring all exchanges to build an always-on balance reconciliation system that compares user ledgers with actual holdings of virtual assets every five minutes, and to adopt automated verification and multi-approval procedures for transactions involving manual intervention, such as event rewards. It also decided to establish compliance oversight and risk management standards at the level of financial companies.