Bitcoin Holder Sends $1.5 Million to "Jared from Subway" by Mistake

A flustered cryptocurrency holder made a frantic appeal to social media after he accidentally sent $1.5 million in Bitcoin to someone nicknamed "jaredfromsubway." It happened because he typed the wrong address and pressed send without double-checking. "Jared from Subway, if you are reading this please help," the Bitcoin holder posted to a private Discord server, claiming his "investors would kill me" if he didn't get the money back. Read on to find out what happened.

On the Discord server, the user pleaded with "Jared" to return the accidental payment. The server was private, but Twitter user 0xCuteSocks tweeted the unfolding saga, including screenshots of the post and links to multiple transactions the Bitcoin holder made. "Jared from Subway, if you are reading this please help," he wrote. "I sent you by mistake tokens for about $1.5 m. Is there any possibility to get them back? Or my investors would kill me. Please help, Jared! I want to live."

"You can't make this … up," 0xCuteSocks said. Commenters on the tweet were mystified about how a crypto geek could make such a consequential error—over and over again. "How do you make multiple accidental transactions to the wrong address? Like, you should check after the first one," wrote one user. "Imagine not making a test transaction before sending $1.5mil," wrote another. "​​It's incredible how much trust people put in these decentralized systems, but it's also a reminder to always double-check the wallet address before sending large amounts of money!" said another.

https://twitter.com/0xCuteSocks/status/1654736993220464640

Ultimately, 0xCuteSocks reported that JaredFromSubway was a "very good person" and refunded the money—while keeping a $50,000 cut for himself. "There's only one in a million anon wallets which would return it. The guy was lucky it was Jared," one Twitter user responded. "if anyone wants to make a similar mistake, i'm available at orbman.eth," another wrote.

It's a rare bit of good news for the crypto industry, which has been beset by falling valuations, inflation, and just general ill will over the last several months. One 21-year-old French man had a particularly unpleasant experience this month, when he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $3.7 million for illegally buying a Ferrari with Bitcoin. The transaction happened in Morocco, where cryptocurrency has been banned since 2017. Thomas Clausi was arrested in 2021, after a French woman living in Casablanca sold a Ferrari to Clausi for a bitcoin payment worth $436,600 at the time. She then filed a complaint accusing him of fraud.

His sentence was originally handed down in October 2022 and upheld by an appeals court earlier this month. Although the full sentence is 18 months, experts say he will likely serve just a month in jail. "With this decision against Clausi, the country appears to be sending a message to all those who have a desire to use digital assets," reported blockworks.co. Despite that, Morocco ranks 14th in the world in cryptocurrency adoption.