It does sound like it was the highest money loot design. Though it could have been a bug, hard to say since you seem confident that it’s not that case.
However in the end it doesn’t matter if it was a bug/glitch/design. Blizzard won’t take any responsibility, even when it was something on their end causing the issue.
Due to some issue on their end I lost everything. I asked for help… they told me nupe nupe nupe. You can see on my link below of just how many people have lost items or characters and blizzard refuses to take responsibility.
Truly sorry for your loss… I do know first hand just how painful that is. After my experience I won’t play until it’s fixed. No point in playing a game where you can lose everything or some things because they didn’t run this game through enough QA… The original D2 did not have even close to this many issues. Blizzard should have done a better job and try to step up and take responsibility.