Whether winning the lottery or the unexpected inheritance from unknown relatives: Suddenly having a large sum of money in your account is a widespread dream. Especially in difficult times like this winter. For a man in the US, the wish of the unexpected transfer suddenly came true. But the story turned out a little differently than you would imagine.
Out of nowhere, Sam Curry received a transfer from Google: the Internet giant had transferred 249,999 US dollars to his account. The problem: He hadn’t done anything about it. However, returning the money turned out to be not so easy.
Because although he quickly turned to the group, he didn’t react at all at first. “It’s been three weeks since Google sent me $249,999 for no reason and I still haven’t received a support request,” Curry tweeted last Wednesday, along with a screenshot of his bank statement. In the tweet, he also addressed the group’s Twitter team and asked them to be contacted. Come hell or high water that is not necessary. “It’s okay if you don’t want the money back,” he joked.
Although Curry said he could have simply withdrawn the money, he preferred to put it aside. Just in case Google would reclaim it after all. One concern is that the group could take too long to do this, he told the US news channel “NPR”. Because then the tax office would demand a corresponding tax payment from him.
It was already clear to Curry where Google got its account number from. The self-described hacker works for a security company, looking for gaps in the protective measures of companies – including Google. The companies pay a reward for reporting bugs, the so-called “Bug Bounty”. But the amount paid was well above what companies would generally pay for the errors reported by Curry, he explains on Twitter.
Google itself has since confirmed this. Triggered by the social media team, the company discovered its mistake. “Our team made a payment to the wrong person through human error,” a Google spokesman told NPR. “We are grateful that this was brought to our attention quickly and are working to fix it.” So far, however, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
Source: Twitter, NPR
