First and foremost, I am not a lawyer. Neither have I studied criminal law. But I am almost 100% certain that you are criminally liable if you are spending money which is not yours. In your case, you are very much aware that the funds are not yours. You have been sufficiently informed that a certain amount is erroneously deposited to your account and that you should send it back to the sender. Knowing all this, you still decided to ignore all of it and, worse, withdrew the said funds to another wallet. That, my friend, is theft!
Now, whether Poloniex will run after you on the basis of that relatively small amount or not, I can't tell. If you abandon your Poloniex account for the sake of the funds wrongly sent to you, you are still a net positive. But if you are a verified user of Poloniex, I'm afraid they can easily make a move against you, so be wise and weigh the risks.
I have altcoins holdings on my Poloniex and assumed the deposit was a free airdrop because I get airdrops a few times on my other exchanges accounts. On Yobit exchange few years ago if I correctly recall I received airdrop of 500 Tron coins!
You do not use the YoBit and "my other exchanges accounts" argument as an attempt to support your assumptions on Poloniex. Have you been receiving similar free airdrops on Poloniex? If no, there's no point assuming it was an airdrop. If yes, were there official announcements made prior to or while the airdrops were ongoing?
Why Poloniex exchange notifying me weeks later after their admission of mistake!?
I understand if Polo notified me within 24hrs of the deposit mistake I would have known and would have not withdrawn the coins but they notified me weeks later
I am not certain whether or not it matters that the attempt by the owner to reclaim what was erroneously sent was made several hours or days later. I don't think it excuses you to make use of someone else's funds simply because the original owner did not immediately inform you of the said mistake.
I am curious, though, from the moment you received the funds, how long did it take before you withdrew it?
When you say criminal you mean breaking the law, how did I break the law on someone else mistake? This is civil legal matter not criminal unless Polo has indisputable evidence or conspiracy that I was involved in that mistake to benefit or fraud from it!
Spending another person or entity's funds wrongfully deposited into your account is breaking the law. As such, it is generally a criminal act, although it might not reach to that point if the receiver admitted the wrongful act of spending another's money and shows good faith by returning the exact amount.
However, at the end of the day, we are both discussing here as armchair lawyers. I am not in any way competent to provide legal advice or anything legal. Everything is purely my opinion.
I received Dai airdrop from Poloniex before in the past and had no advanced email notification on that.
Contact them and tell them that you've sold the tokens and can't return them. Maybe you will reach an agreement.
I don't think you've done anything wrong here since you sold the tokens before their notification but it's always better to resolve such issues amicably.
I did reply to them and told them the truth that I sold them. Now they threatening to liquidate my assets on their exchange if I don't return the coins back but I cant!
~snip
But I cant return the coins because I sold them as I said in my 1st post on this thread! Sold them way before Polo notified me weeks later.
It doesn't matter whether you sold it or not since you will have the money you have earned from that illegal sale. Now the problem you will have is either you don't have the money you earned from those crypto or you will come up short because it has appreciated from the point when you have sold it either way you need to come up with the same quantity of Bitcoin you have received mistakenly and return it back to them as what you did is illegal and Poloniex has the right to file criminal charges against you. There is no excuses for your liability even if this was Poloniex's mistake.
Hows it illegal? Was there any criminal association behind the transaction, like money laundering, terrorism or drugs, hacks?
It even states in Poloniex user agreement responsibility cannot be held if coins are sent to the wrong address and the risk of it of not getting coins back.
So this comes down to a moral or legal issue, how's it criminal? What criminal law did I break or violate? Theft? Did I had intention to steal or hack coins from another address from the beginning?
Im just confused
Im getting replies in this thread that its Poloniex fault and replies saying its my fault.
I just leave it to Poloniex customer reviews for you to read to make up your judgements and decision.
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]
