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It's been a little over 3 weeks since Google randomly sent me $249,999
- tibbon 4y agoWhy are companies so unresponsive to customer service complaints? Surely 1000 Google employees have seen this post
- MerelyMortal 4y agoDoes Google have an internal form for employees with the option: "person on internet accidently received money from us"? Do those 1,000 people even care, or hope the person gets to keep it, or maybe it's the Bystander Effect?
- tgv 4y agoIt’s Somebody Else’s Problem.
- bastawhiz 4y agoNobody at Google is going to get a promotion for solving this
- ryandrake 4y agoI once did an internship with a BigTechCompany, and after my internship was over and I went back to university, they kept paying me! Every two weeks, I got another paycheck direct deposited. As a starving student, I have to admit it was not easy to just ignore it sitting there in my bank account but I knew if I spent it I'd eventually be in a world of hurt. I tried to contact BigTechCompany, but evidently their HR department was as incompetent as their payroll department--they didn't understand what I was talking about and kept saying since I don't work for them they would not discuss internal payroll issues with them. So month after month, my bank account grew and grew, and I'm sitting in class eating ramen noodles. Finally, after about 8 months of this, I got an extremely threatening letter from BigTechCompany's lawyers informing me that due to a payroll error, I was overpaid, and they demand I immediately return the money that was not mine or face legal consequences, blah, blah, blah. Of course I sent it back, but what a wild and crazy way for a company to treat people when it's entirely the company's fault.
- eek2121 4y agoYou should have ignored the letter and called a lawyer. Depending on your location, you may have been allowed to keep the money. I had something similar happen before (a much smaller amount, 3 weeks extra pay) and I was able to keep the money. They did send a threatening letter, but I paid a lawyer a few bucks to tell them to go pound sand.
- svnpenn 4y agoExactly what I was thinking. Company fucked up. Not my job to babysit their money for 8 months, and DEFINITELY not my job to call them and beg them to take it back. Corporations have brainwashed a lot of people I think, to forget that you have agency over your own life.
- ryandrake 4y agoOh trust me, I did call an attorney for a free consultation. Apparently in my State my chances of keeping the money were slim and he advised me to just return it and move on with life. I figured if even a lawyer doesn't see any money for himself here, then I don't see any either.
- pfisherman 4y agoAnother way might have been look at it like a free loan. Invest the money (in something relatively safe), and then pay it back having earned yourself some interest / return for your trouble of looking after their money.
- rullelito 4y agolol God no
- RobRivera 4y agosmart move! very good to seek legal consultant in such situations
- julian_t 4y agoI once had a large company pay me 10x what they owed, and giving the extra back to them was quite a performance. I remember the long suffering lady in their accounts department saying that it was "like pushing the egg back up the chicken".
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoCall a lawyer, try to keep the money. That's it.
- rawoke083600 4y agolol this would be a fantastic study of how closely tied your Gmail account is to your identity :) Granted it's a study of N=1. But if you were to say "close down" all your Gmail accounts (I presume you have them) Will Big-G find you or deem it worthwhile for you to be found ?
- justusthane 4y agoPresumably if Google was able to send him $250k they already have his actual identity, right?
- wil421 4y agoIt should be trivial for a company the size of Google to have their lawyers speak with authorities in say California and file theft charges against you. I’d bet some Google employees have direct lines to police and prosecutors.
- ForHackernews 4y agoAlternatively, a company the size of Google may be so huge and bureaucratic that it's not worth anyone's time to track down a mere $250 grand.
- justusthane 4y agoFrom one of the replies: > Be careful. > There is a scam where people put money into your account. > You send the money back to them, only to they've applied for a loan in your name that you still have to pay back, but you've given away the money. > Make sure it is you who initiates contact. Verify! That’s a terrifying scam!
- dislikedtom2 4y agoI would blame the loaner for giving malicious loan that can't be legal. If someone here is not careful with money, it's the bank.
- capableweb 4y agoThe whole "bank said my identity has been stolen, they took all my money" fiasco makes it pretty clear banks can blame whatever on whomever, and the judicial system won't do squat.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoYeah, it's very asymmetrical with banks. Say you wire a large amount of money to the wrong account number? Too bad, you don't get it back. A large amount of money is mistakenly wired to your account? You're in for a world of hurt.
- jtbayly 4y agoThis isn’t true in my experience in the US. House purchase wired to slightly wrong account number. Stressful that money hadn’t shown up at closing, but it was resolved within a day.
- FireBeyond 4y agoYup. My parents wired me some funds from Australia to the US for a gift for part of a house downpayment. Something got screwed up with the numbers and the intermediary bank concept. But was able to call someone in the bank's operations department who was able to correct the issue and forward the wire on (I want to say it was sent to the intermediary bank's bank number, but the recipient bank account number, so intermediary said 'this is for us, but this isn't a valid account' - thankfully even though I wasn't the sender I was able to update them, because the comments on the wire had the correct "intended destination" so there was no ambiguity).
- phphphphp 4y agoThe author participates in bug bounties and Google have a $250k reward for certain vulnerability types so perhaps it’s more “sent me $250k without notifying me about my bounty submission” than “randomly” https://bughunters.google.com/about/rules/6171833274204160/android-and-google-devices-security-reward-program-rules https://bughunters.google.com/about/rules/6171833274204160/a... Alternatively, they have his bank details from participation in bug bounties and he was mistakenly sent someone’s Ad revenue. https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/2731686?hl=en https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/2731686?hl=en
- capableweb 4y agoSeems to be a transfer from some ad-related business on Google's side: > Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) directly deposits your Ad Exchange revenue into your bank account [...] the deposit will be labeled as one of the following [...] Google LLC EDI PYMNTS https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/2731686?hl=en https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/2731686?hl=en
- jefftk 4y agoThat ad payments arrive labeled "Google LLC EDI PYMNTS" doesn't tell us that bug bounty payments would not also arrive with that label. In this case, the text probable means "[Google the Company] [Electronic Data Interchange] [Payments]" and I wouldn't expect that to be ads-specific? (Disclosure: I used to work on ads at Google, but don't know anything internal here)
- iancarroll 4y agoGoogle makes every security researcher sign up as a vendor inside their procurement system, SAP Ariba. Seems likely that a payment for another vendor got misdirected by the procurement team as a result of this.
- pixelbeat__ 4y agoCareful with tax implications!
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoThere is no tax implication of being incorrectly wired money. This money is not his.
- bastawhiz 4y agoThat's a very optimistic view of how the government would interpret this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 4y agoIf they do not claw it back before tax time what do you do? Claim it as income and pay tax and then refile your return later? Ignore it and hope the bank didn’t report it? What if Google then also 1099s you?
- 323 4y agoYou just leave it aside until you figure out it's status. Since it's pretty likely the money will be returned, I don't think this is a controversial take.
- sbaiddn 4y agoYa its a bloody nightmare made worse by Google's wall of impenetrability.
- andsoitis 4y agoYou ask your accountant what to do.
- datavirtue 4y ago
- fimdomeio 4y agothis could be an idea for the beggining of a nightmare tale. A family strugling financially gets 250.000 from google but can never contact google because they are so difficult to reach but also can never use the money for fear of google noticing at some point and asking for the money back. Bank freezes account for suspect activity, irs audit and all kinds of hell...
- riskable 4y agoFYI: The (Federal) statute of limitations on fraudulent bank transfers is 5 years. That's from a "they can prosecute you" standpoint. Various states have their own laws but in Florida (where I live) the undo button on the "oops, the bank/some company transferred a million into your account without noticing" is one year. There's two reasons why the time frame is so short: 1) "It's their own damned fault." There's an expectation that of all the institutions that should have 100% control and visibility to all of their transactions it's banks and big businesses. 2) The longer funds have gone unreturned the more expensive and time consuming it (usually) is to trace where the money went. I don't know if one year is the optimal period for such tradeoff calculations (probably not) but it is what it is.
- joeconway 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/dec/04/hmrc-mistake-return-cash-revenue https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/dec/04/hmrc-mistake-r...
- sbaiddn 4y agoIts a bloody nightmare. Anything above $10k triggers a bunch of bureaucracy but the money that causes and therefore to deal with this (lawyers, accountants, etc) is not theirs to keep. They could end up paying thousands in fees, and have to wait years to get $80K back from the taxman
- eek2121 4y agoYou are definitely overstating it. The bank is required to keep records and file paperwork (i.e., inform the IRS) on deposits of over $10,000, but other than that, nothing happens. I regularly receive large deposits from my place of employment that exceed $10,000. I file taxes just like every other person each year. Shoot, I've received refunds from the IRS that exceed that amount.
- 323 4y agoWhy do they pay $249,999.99 instead of a round $250,000? Is it for tax reasons (different bracket)? I think it would upset me a bit to not have that last cent there. Feels disrespectful in some way.
- hacym 4y agoTax is always on margin, so making more to put you into a different “bracket” does nothing. The only thing this could change is if they couldn’t pay $250k without THEIR burden changing in regards to how they’re paying you, but seems unlikely.
- justusthane 4y agoJust to expand on this as I think this is a fairly common misconception about how tax brackets work: Say you have two tax brackets: $0 - $100: 10% $101 - $200: 15% If you make $150, the entire $150 is not taxed at 15%. The first $100 is taxed at 10%, and the remaining $50 is taxed at 15%. This is why being in a higher tax bracket is never (edit: usually not) a bad thing - you can't net less than you would have in the lower bracket.
- popotamonga 4y agoIn some countries, depending on your max bracket you may or not be eligible for some breaks, meaning the extra $1 can in fact be a bad thing. For example in my country the amount you can deduct on health/education expenses depends on the bracket you are placed in.
- hacym 4y agoThis is true, but in this instance a $250k payment likely negates all benefits you’d be eligible for either way.
- pengaru 4y ago> This is why being in a higher tax bracket is never a bad thing - you can't net less than you would have in the lower bracket. It's a bad thing if you could defer realizing that higher-bracket income to a low-income year.
- PcChip 4y agoJust don't buy a mansion, they might sue you for it back a year later like crypto.com did https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/09/01/crypto-platform-sues-woman-after-accidentally-sending-her-7point1-million.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/09/01/cry...
- Gigachad 4y agoJust stick it in a high interest savings account and enjoy the free gains for every month until they claim it back
- maguirre 4y agoWon't it be a problem come tax season? He would have to report that as income which will cost more than the interest he will get from a high yield acct
- bagels 4y agoFor tax purposes, consider it as a loan.
- FartyMcFarter 4y agoThe interest might be taxed as income depending on where you live, but I don't see how the erroneous transfer would be considered income if you have to give it back.
- mannykannot 4y agoBut if it was not an erroneous transfer (maybe, as some have speculated, an unannounced bug bounty) and this is not made clear before estimated tax payments are due, I suspect the default IRS response will be to charge penalties and interest on any late payments. One might get them waived, but not without considerable trouble and cost.
- deleted 4y ago
- Havoc 4y ago> If they do make contact for a return, make sure to receive a copy of their incorporation documents, signatures of its largest shareholders, a copy of government issued ID, a liveness test, proof of address in the form of a utility bill dated within 3 months. A copy of its last… Quality bantz from the peanut gallery
- hedora 4y agoDemand the government ID be an original copy of the company's drivers license.
- martinflack 4y agoAnd do not under any circumstance forget to administer a captcha of traffic lights.
- squarefoot 4y agoPossibly within a 2-3x loop, just to be more faithful to the original.
- b20000 4y agoalso, ask them for 7 one hour sessions of leetcode and a behavioral interview and then send them a nice email saying you are passing on them and wish them the best of luck on their journey.
- potsandpans 4y agoor even better: tell them that they did great, but unfortunately requirements have shifted.
- tyingq 4y agoIt took Google several years to notice tens of millions in fraudulent invoices from one guy: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706715377/man-pleads-guilty-to-phishing-scheme-that-fleeced-facebook-google-of-100-million https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706715377/man-pleads-guilty-t... If this had been kept quiet, I think the odds are high it would have never been noticed. I don't think Google has any of their own internal special sauce on their invoicing and payment. They are just as bad at it as everyone else.
- Rapzid 4y agoI wonder if there is a way to make it legal. Like turn it in as found and after a period if Google doesn't claim it.. At a minimum I would consult with a lawyer.
- Gasp0de 4y agoIn Germany it would be legal to claim it after 4 years.
- capableweb 4y ago> At a minimum I would consult with a lawyer Which, if it turns out you cannot legally keep the money somehow, you just paid a ton of money for someone to basically tell you that you cannot have the money, so now you're paying money because Google sent you money.
- Rapzid 4y agoWell if you are already having trouble getting Google to pay attention to you and take back the money it might be cheaper to consult a lawyer than wasting more of your own time on the issue. And then if you are considering the possibility of keeping it somehow I don't think you could afford to NOT consult a lawyer. Either way it does seem like Google is going to end up costing you time/money :|
- tyingq 4y agoMaybe some lawyer would take it on a percentage contingency?
- exabrial 4y agoThey don’t reply to any of my support tickets… if they’re too cool to help your grandma, then they can lay in the bed they made.
- sbaiddn 4y agoMove the money to another account so it can't easily be reversed (reversal is not easy, but you're up against Google) You're in a nasty little situation and they're not answering their business phones. You're facing a $80k windfall tax liability you'll need cash to pay, and the possibility Google will wake up an demand their money back at the most inconvenient time (after taxes are due, etc).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- s1artibartfast 4y agoyou would have to be crazy to pay taxes on the 80k for that exact reason. I wouldnt even consider it, even if it were in my account for years.
- akeck 4y agoI would send a certified letter, perhaps even drafted by one's attorney, to Google's legal correspondence address requiring them to resolve the situation.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoThe law firm is also going to have a trust account to hold the funds while the situation works itself out. Where I live those trust accounts are interest-bearing, and the interest is swept into a state-run legal aid fund for the poor. So it would be a (very slight) added bonus that Google's payment mistake would have some societal benefit. Anyway, Google's fiscal quarter ends in ~2 weeks. They'll probably notice it when they reconcile accounts for SEC reporting, starting Oct 1.
- riskable 4y ago> They'll probably notice it when they reconcile accounts for SEC reporting, starting Oct 1. $250k is rounding error territory at such a large organization. Not only that but the person in question is registered to receive bug bounties worth... $250k. So no, I don't think they'd think twice about it when it comes time to reconcile the books.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoThat's just crazy. But totally believable. So I guess the question then is: "at what point can you keep it/spend it without any legal concern?"
- gruez 4y ago>Where I live those trust accounts are interest-bearing, and the interest is swept into a state-run legal aid fund for the poor. So it would be a (very slight) added bonus that Google's payment mistake would have some societal benefit. Realistically speaking the interest would get soaked up by the banks providing that account, because they'll be paying a pitiful rate[1] of 0.01% or whatever, whereas the prevailing rate for short term deposits is around 2.5%[2]. [1] random result: https://www.chase.com/personal/savings/savings-account/interest-rates https://www.chase.com/personal/savings/savings-account/inter... [2] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value_month=202209 https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/...
- peer2pay 4y agoI used to work for a company optimising business processes. You’d all be surprised by just how much money large companies waste by paying invoices twice and/or paying invoices that nobody can trace back to a purchase order.
- aqme28 4y agoAh yes, the "three-way match" problem. You have purchase orders going out, invoices coming in, and products coming in. It's not always easy to associate all three with eachother in the real world.
- crmd 4y agoIf this happens to you, do yourself a favor and immediately retain a lawyer to handle the communication with the counter-party and with your bank.
- jtbayly 4y agoI don’t have the money to hire a lawyer for this, unless I’m able to pay the lawyer out of the 250k.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoPay off any student loans. If Google wants the money back, at least you can now file bankruptcy.
- jenny91 4y agoNot sure if I'd trade $250k for bankruptcy with the earning potential of a decent software engineer in the US labor market? It's so-so though.
- eek2121 4y agoBankruptcy does not change your ability to be employed.
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoI have heard of employers doing a credit check, or making it part of the hiring background check. This may tend to only affect the not-highest-paying types of employers that also require a drug test, though.
- smcl 4y agoUnless you’re looking for a job in finance
- jenny91 4y agoI'm not sure of the implications on employment, but I imagine it has implications on ability to get credit (e.g. for morgage) which can be meaningful in the US (and other places of course).
- hellotomyrars 4y agoNot the same scope, but I bought some photobooks from Google. They put a temp charge on my card, which isn't unusual, at checkout. Then it went away. And it went away for good. Happy for the free photobooks. ~$100 I didn't have to spend.
- pram 4y agoGoogle sent me 3 Nest Wi-Fi’s when one broke and I called their support. They just kept coming over and over