Blogger and security engineer Sam Curry got the shock of a lifetime recently after he found out Google had transferred USD249,999.99 into his account for no reason. He claimed that he waited almost a month to hear back from the company and after he contacted Google , eventually he was told by the tech giant that a “human error” caused the accidental large sum transfer.
Sam Curry tweeted on Wednesday(14th September 2022) that Google had “randomly” transferred him $249,999 alongside a screenshot revealing that it has been a little over 3 weeks since the tech giant made the transfer without giving any notice. Moreover, despite almost one month having passed by, Google has yet to respond to Curry’s enquiry on the matter. Curry even jokingly said that he is okay if Google doesn’t want the money back. He did not spend the money and kept it for when the company would inevitably ask for it back. To avoid paying tax on the money, he transferred it to another account.
Curry, who is also a staff engineer at Yuga Labs recently told NPR that he sometimes does bug bounty hunting for tech companies and had received payments from Google for such services before. However, Curry believes that the quarter of a million dollar transfer has got nothing to do with his work and may just be a mistake on Google’s part. That guess turns out to be true as Google had since released a statement to NPR saying that the transfer was made in error. A Google spokesperson said that its team had made a payment to the wrong party as the result of human error.
Furthermore Google’s spokesperson told NPR that it planned to get the money back.
Lastly, Google said that it is really appreciative of Curry for quickly communicating the matter. The tech giant further elaborated that it is currently working to correct the error by getting the money back from the blogger.
