What would you do if someone gave you money for nothing?

Now i'm the sort of person that if I found a purse or wallet in the street in rl, I would take the money and throw the wallet into the bin.

However in SL I try to act differently, as I am (supposed) to be a trustworthy business person and thats the role I have played successfully for the past 4 years.

So 1 week ago today a resident who will remain nameless paid me L$50000 for no reason. I checked my entire sales history and this person has never been a customer. I checked my traffic monitor and this person hasn't even visited my stores in the last 30 days so not even a potential customer.

So taking into account my above documented SL honesty I sent an IM to this person telling them of their error, asking them why they paid me L$50K and offering their money back. Didnt get an offline message so assumed this person recieved the IM. From their profile I know they are english speaking and that if they chose to read the IM they would have understood it. So I wait 24 hrs. No response.

Very odd thinks Porky.

So 24 hours after the IM I send a notecard entitled "YOU PAYED ME L$50K BY MISTAKE" again asking why they had paid me 50K and offering a refund. The notecard inventory offer was accepted within 30 secs so this person was online.

No response.

So yesterday, 6 days after I recieved the payment, I IM'd and sent a notecard again. Again they seemed to be online when I sent the IM and they accepted the notecard within a few minutes.

No reposnse.

This lack of response has now annoyed me as I want to know 1) why they sent me the money and 2) why they wont respond to me when I try to offer it back.

I know I could just send them the L$50K back and wash my hands of this but that will pay my tier next month so unless they respond I will keep it and spend it.

What would you do at this point if you were me?

This is a hard one, oh, no wait...

SHOP

I'd repay them personally. Something fishy about giving away L$50K.

I'd feel worried about it - phrases like "money laundering" and "extortion" keep coming into my mind.

Forgot to mention. The person who payed me is 2 months old, no account info on file, no picks, no Av image, no classified ads, on their interests page they had ticked every box and listed Eng as a language. Thats all the info I have other than the name.

I'm often giving away large sums of money for no reason at all... if you need any just send me an IM and I'll send you a photocopy of a L$50k note.

Seriously 50k is quite a lot of money by in-game standards this is very unusual indeed - maybe you should get the Lindens to look at this transaction after all you have made several attempts to contact the person who payed you...

Is it possible it was some sort of accidental group dividend?

Take care, people get their accounts suspended for things like this until the mess is straightened out, even if you haven't done anything wrong.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/17/if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true%E2%80%A6/

Actually, I've had that happen a couple of times. I'm not "rich", but I don't generally need money in SL so badly that I feel at all compelled to keep an unexpected windfall. Most people in SL need it worse than I do. My policy is to always try to return such funds, and if I can't contact the source, I hold the funds for at least 60 days before doing anything with the money. Unlike RL situations where one finds a $20 bill lying on the street, and has no way to know where it came from, in SL you *always* know who gave you the money. It's in your transaction log.

In each case, I have done as you did. I contacted the person by IM and by notecard, and asked the reason for the unexpected payment, stating the amount and the date/time info. In each case, they did eventually contact me, and were surprised that I was so willing and ready to return their money. Usually it was someone who I barely knew, but who had me on their Friends list, and they had intended to pay the funds to someone else. Or they were trying to pay someone who had been standing near me, and instead clicked on my wings or tail, which got in their way.

If nothing else, contacting them by IM and by notecard at least puts you on-record as having tried to return an unexpected windfall. The Lindens can locate that attempt in their records if the transfer comes into question.

If it was just a small amount I'd be inclined to keep it, but as others have said, this amount smells a bit fishy. I don't really understand how money laundering and stuff works, but if you just pay it back, haven't you just laundered it for him?

I think in this case I'd notify the Lindens.

Actually, I seem to remember they did a blog post ages ago about what to do in this situation, but may have been dreaming.

ETA:


ah, I wasn't dreaming then!

The Lindens are F%@!!G useless so I am not asking them. I have contacted them numerous times over the years regarding payment disputes etc and they just arnt interested in resident transactions so not going to waste my time there.

Good suggestion about group dividens but im only in a few groups, and this person isnt a member of them from what I can see so don't think thats the answer.

Thanks

I'd be VERY suspicious and I'd pay it straight back. Definitely.

Unless I thought it was actually Ciaran's money, in which case it would be shoes and broomsticks all round, on Ciaran's expenses!

MAYBE tho ... maybe ... someone who ripped off your designs has had a fit of conscience?

I'm not struggling for L$ either and would never be in a position where i couldnt pay it back if asked so even if i allocated the money to Tier tomorow I could allways pay it back at a later date when requested.

I think I addressed the 'contacting the Lindens in my last post. I will wait for them to contact me.

I can think of numerous ways of how this happened by mistake but the fact they wont respond to me is annoying.

Maybe they have me muted for some reason.

This is currently my main theory, i.e. someone who has ripped me off in the past is making up for it now, maybe with a alt. There have been 3 instances where i have stopped poeple selling stolen prefab designs and 2 instances where I didnt recieve full payment for custom sims I had built because the customer disapeared/stopped loggin on.

Seems the most obvious explanation if the payee's intention was to give me money.

I did a lot of work for IBM when they first opened their sims and charged them a pittence compared to todays rates so maybe it's them showing me some love

If you wanted to be safe:
1) Pay back the money.
2) Raise a ticket recording the payment and repayment. That way you have a record proving your innocence should that 50,000 turn out to have come from an illicit source.


If you think/know the payment was a mistake, just pay it back.
Why hold onto the money? You know where it came from.

BUT..
Could this be a genuine Nigerian princess actually giving out L$ 50,000 (FIFTY THOUSAND LINDEN DOLLARS), with no modalities to be sorted out, no attorney/registration fees to be paid in advance??
ZOMG!!!! - and you paid it back??? ZOMG!!! you idiot!!!





Alternatively:
Hey! That was my alt account. I paid you by mistake. I didn't get your IMs and Notes as the account seems to be borked.
Just pay it back to me directly. Thanks! It's wonderful to meet an honest person.

Seeing as you said they have no payment info on file I would be very interested to know where that 50K came from. I would send it back no questions asked and wash my hands of it. As nice as it would be to have 50K.. I would be worried it would come back to bite me in the ass. (can I say ass here? LOL)

Have you lost any teeth recently?
Maybe it was the Tooth Fairy.

I had to really think about this one, but I honestly believe that given the attempts you've made to contact the person, I'd sit on the money for 30 days, and then feel free to spend it in-world. The last thing I'd do is cash it out.

So have someone else contact them to verify that.
Then make sure you keep a log of all communications with this person. Since this may or may not be shady on THEIR part (i.e. laundering) and you're not hurting for L's you can just 'hold on' to the money in case the Lindens ever investigate this.
You can always return it then.

Then accidentally send me 20k - I will invest it wisely in shoes and hair.

See.... now I wish I had never posted here as you are all starting to worry me, Maybe I should jusy pay it back and send a ticket to cover my arse.

And no Rainy you're not allowed to say ass here....the correct pronounciation is ARSE!

I wouldn't pay it back yet.. Contact support and go from there.

Ok, Arse it is then. Good luck with whatever you decide.

insta-refund , clearly nobody _in_their_right_mind_ would do this ?


*many people would mute, run & hide , i have seen this happen for L$50


.

Hey!

Maybe it's ....... A TEST !!!!

Maybe they are waiting to see if you pay the money back....... and if you do ..... they send you a MILLION!!!!



Ah but.......
What if they are rich and crazy, and want to wipe out honesty in the world...
You pay it back... and they send an IM saying "SUCKER!!!!!"



You could go mad thinking up rationalisations for anything.


Free yourself!
Pay it back.

Well,I would worry about refunding it without talking to support first. It could be taken as a sign you had something to do with the laundering err fraud.....(If there is any....)

Most people simply pay me to go away. (^_^)

Who knows? this could be someone's poorly scripted camp-bot. I've seen bots do worse. There was a time when someone's bot IMed me and a few other people with thousands of texture UUIDs. When I ARed the bugger, I got Linden attention FAST! (O_O)

(^_^)y