--- title: "Google Accidentally Sends Bored Ape Engineer $250,000" description: "Wrong Button Everybody makes mistakes. Even Google. And sometimes, apparently, Google's mistakes include accidentally handing a self-described hacker and BAYC-creating Yuga Labs security engineer nearly $250k. According to a tweet from Sam Curry, the engineer who received the bizarre payment, the mystery payment appeared in his bank account a few weeks ago. By his account, […]" date: "2022-09-19" modified: "2022-09-19" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-accidentally-pays-bored-ape-engineer" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Future Society" - "Google" tags: - "bayc" - "Google" - "hacker" - "the digest" --- # Google Accidentally Sends Bored Ape Engineer $250,000 ![Google accidentally handed a self-described hacker and BAYC-creating Yuga Labs security engineer nearly $250,000. Lucky for them, he wasnts to give it back.]() *\Image: Futurism\* ## Wrong Button Everybody makes mistakes. Even Google. And sometimes, apparently, Google's mistakes include accidentally handing a self-described hacker and [BAYC-creating Yuga Labs]() security engineer nearly $250k. According [to a tweet from Sam Curry](), the engineer in question, the mystery payment appeared in his bank account a few weeks ago. Figuring it was likely an error on Google's end, he filed a customer support request. When Google failed to respond to the ticket, the engineer decided to take the issue to the internet. "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," Curry wrote in a tweet, complete with a screenshot of the transaction. "Is there any way we could get in touch @Google?" "It's OK if you don’t want it back," he continued. https://twitter.com/samwcyo/status/1569897392560050178 ## Human Error It turns out Curry's hunch was right. Google indeed meant to give someone else a quarter million bones, but accidentally wired the payment to the wrong person. Kind of like sending a text to the wrong number — except, in this case, it was a massive pile of cash. "Our team recently made a payment to the wrong party as the result of human error," a Google spokesperson told *CNN*. "We appreciate that it was quickly communicated to us by the impacted partner, and we are working to correct it." ## Lucky Strike Now, before any Google users out there get their hopes up, Curry wasn't a total rando that the search engine plucked from its many millions of site surfers. As Curry explained to *NPR*, he does bug bounty hunting — basically, freelance cybersecurity work — for several companies outside of Yuga Labs, including for Google. In other words, Curry was somewhere in the company's payroll system, and some unlucky staffer just hit the wrong name. Anyway, props to the engineer for alerting Google to the error, and our sympathies to whoever made the mistake on Google's end. We're sure this probably doesn't happen that often, given Google's size and sophistication. Or at the very least, pretty sure it doesn't. **READ MORE:** *[Google mistakenly sent an engineer almost $250,000]()* \[*CNN*\] **More on accidental payments:** *[Man Who Accidentally Got Paid 330x His Salary Quits, Disappears]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()