A self-described hacker randomly received $250,000 (approximately Rs 2 crore) from Google last month. Sam Curry had no idea why the tech giant supposedly handed a quarter of a million dollars over to him.
“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 tweeted on Tuesday. He shared a screenshot of the transaction on the microblogging platform.
According to Newsweek, Curry is a staff security engineer Yuga Labs in Omaha, Nebraska. He said he dabbles in bug bounty hunting –which is when several companies offer monetary rewards to individuals who find bugs or security gaps in their software.
Curry said he had done bug bounty hunting for Google in the past, but could not find a connection between that and his recent windfall.
The mystery was cleared up when Google confirmed to NPR that it had made the payment accidentally, blaming it on human error.
“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,” a Google spokesperson told NPR.
Curry said he had not yet spent any of the $250,000 he received, which is just as well because the Google spokesperson confirmed the company intends to get it back.
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