What would you do if your bank account unexpectedly had a deposit for a quarter of a million dollars? It might sound unbelievable, but that's exactly what happened to a man who describes himself as a hacker.
Sam Curry, a self-described "bug bounty hunter," says he was mysteriously paid $249,999.99 by Google last month and he has no idea why.
Curry posted a screenshot of the deposit on Twitter, trying to get some kind of response from the tech giant.
"It's been a little over 3 weeks since Google randomly sent me $249,999 and I still haven't heard anything on the support ticket. Is there any way we could get in touch Google," Curry wrote.
He added: "It's OK if you don't want it back."
Curry, a staff security engineer at blockchain technology company Yuga Labs, told NPR that he sometimes does bug bounty hunting for companies where he's paid to find vulnerabilities in their software. Additionally, Google has a vulnerability reward program that pays researchers for finding bugs that could potentially impact their services.
But Curry hasn't been able to find any link between his work and the random payment. He said his requests for support have also gone unanswered by the company.
NPR reached out to Google, which confirmed the quarter-million payment was an accident.
"Our team recently made a payment to the wrong party as the result of human error. We appreciate that it was quickly communicated to us by the impacted partner, and we are working to correct it," the statement said.
Google said it intended to get the money back but as of Thursday afternoon, Curry told NPR the money was still in his account.
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