'It's okay if you don't want it back': Man receives $250,000 payment from Google

Tech giant Google sent $250,000 (approx Rs 2 crore) to a self-proclaimed hacker, following what the company said was a "human error".

The glitch came to light after Sam Curry, the beneficiary, flagged the random payment to Google on social media.

“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 ?,” tweeted Curry, a "bug bounty hunter", as stated on his Twitter profile.

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Google, in a statement given to NPR, said that a "human error" led to this glitch and the payment was actually intended for another party. “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," said the tech giant.

Curry, who had a brief stint with Google as bug bounty hunter, a job where people are paid by organisations to find vulnerabilities in their software, was however unable to connect the dots in this case. “While the money was available for me to spend, I was simply holding onto it just in case they tried to get it back”, he said.

Sam Curry currently works with Yuga Labs as a Staff Security Engineer.