Block 496057 30 BTC in fees.

[Sundark]

Probably just a mistype? That's the same as 0.32 BTC per kB, 77 times the current recommended fee of 420000 satoshis/kB.

This kind of mistake already happened before, like this one: https://blockchain.info/tx/6fe69404e6c12b25b60fcd56cc6dc9fb169b24608943def6dbe1eb0a9388ed08 with a fee of 15.68 BTC.

Talk about being sick to your stomach after you see what happened. No coming back from that except begging the miner to give it back.

Actually I've seen some cases when users begged for refund and mining pool gave back already claimed bitcoins.
It is not unheard of, user might receive full or in the worst case scenario partially refund.

[freedomno1]

I was wondering what may have caused this entity to include insane fees with 2 transactions that could have been sent and confirmed with far lower fees.

http://blockr.io/block/info/469057

This transaction has 16.952 BTC in fees -- http://blockr.io/tx/info/cb95ab3aef378c14bc59d0db682d96202b981c1f8fad7d66e23e0be06f2a00c4

This transaction has 10.769 BTC in fees -- http://blockr.io/tx/info/8e12a1aba87e4657f5fabec1121ed57f706805ad6d4ffe88c6fce78596bd9b75

Bixin is the pool that mined this block.

Someone used the custom settings and made a mistake back in the day the pool refunded on goodwill but now maybe not.
Coin days destroyed is 708 and 648 so they likely didn't send from that wallet for years and forgot to do a test send.