According to NPR, Google recently paid someone $249,999.99 in a surprising manner, and the recipient claimed to have no idea why the tech company suddenly gave him the money.
The person who accidentally received a huge amount of payment from Google tweeted:
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?
(it's OK if you don't want it back…) pic.twitter.com/t6f7v5erli
— Sam Curry (@samwcyo) September 14, 2022
Sam Curry, a staff security engineer, revealed to NPR that he occasionally participates in bug bounty hunting for businesses like Google. People are then compensated to assist businesses and other groups in identifying software flaws. However, he claims he was unable to connect the money sent into his bank account with bug bounty hunting for Google.
He added that if Google didn’t respond to him right once, he could have to transfer the money into another account to avoid paying taxes on it. Curry finally concluded that Google probably paid him unintentionally. Apparently, he was correct.
An official Google spokeswoman told NPR in a statement that, due to a mistake made by one of their team members, Google recently paid the incorrect person. They appreciate that the impacted partner swiftly informed them of the issue, and they are working to fix it.
According to the spokeswoman, the business planned to recover the funds.
Curry stated that he was interested in learning how frequently something similar occurs at Google as well as what procedures are in place to look for similar failures.
