Can you imagine waking up one day with a deposit of 5 million pesos in your bank account? This was the case of security engineer Sam Curry who found $250,000 for a Google payment.
A few weeks ago, Curry, who works as a security engineer for Yuga Labs, tweeted that he had received a mysterious payment of $249,999 (about 5 million Mexican pesos) from Google for work he never did.
The specialist who lives in Omaha explained what happened to his followers on Twitter:
“It’s been a little over 3 weeks since Google randomly deposited me $249,999 and I still haven’t heard from the tech support team,” Curry wrote. “Is there any way we can get in touch with @Google?”
Curry also posted a screenshot of the transaction and remarked that “it wouldn’t be a problem” if Google didn’t want the money back.
Sam Curry is a bug bounty hunter
As Curry told NPR, he’s a “digital bounty hunter” as he uses his skills to find security bugs at famous tech companies. That is, these giants pay him to search for vulnerabilities in his programs.
Curry had worked with Google in this way and at first thought this payment was part of this work, but the company confirmed to CNN that it was indeed a deposit in error.
“Our team recently made a payment to the wrong party as a result of human error,” a spokesperson told the outlet via email.
“We appreciate that the affected partner brought this to our attention quickly and we are working to correct it.”
The hacker reported that as of the end of last week, the deposit was still in his account. He also said that he hasn’t spent any of that money, just in case.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.