What should I do when a hacker gives me hacked money?

I ended up calling Rockstar and they removed the money. They said that I might get banned on the next banwave, and they also said that they left a note on my account so if I get banned I should call Rockstar again, and they will lift the ban. I also acted fast by uploading a video and sending it to Rockstar.


Hmm, that's a different response to when it happened to me last year on the 360.

Basically Rockstar support told me to not worry about it, play as normal, and they'll remove the money when they get around to it. I never got banned.

I've just been given money for the second time but now on the PC version and for that reason I'm just not worried about it. If they do ban me though (I mean, I received the money, I didn't even ask for it) then I'll just point them to my first support ticket with them!

This is the reply to the original ticket, note the second to last paragraph:

You are receiving this automatic ticket update because you have an open ticket in the Rockstar Support system related to GTA Online modding, cheating, or hacking. We have received a large number of complaints over the past few weeks about cheaters gifting large amounts of GTA$ to others, setting bounty rewards outside game limits, or otherwise attempting to tamper with the GTA Online economy.

We have deployed several hotfixes to prevent this type of activity, and will be adding further cheat protection in future Title Updates as well. Players who willingly cheated to create this illegitimate influx of in-game currency have been separated out from the rest of the population and we are continuing to monitor for suspicious activity. If you were the unwilling recipient of an impossibly large amount of GTA$, you do not need to worry about us taking action against your account. However, please be aware that we will be making community-wide automatic adjustments to players’ account balances to remove the modded money.

At this time, you do not need to do anything further and this ticket will resolve on its own. Thank you for contacting us to report this activity. We look forward to seeing you Online!

If you believe you are receiving this message in error, or your ticket is not about GTA Online cheaters, please feel free to respond to this message and we will address your issue individually. Please note that we are not currently accepting appeals for players banned or in the Cheater Pool for transferring modded cash to others, and we are not able to remove these cash gifts on a case-by-case basis. Account balance adjustments will occur system-wide to undo these gifts.

Rockstar Games


You will not be banned for receiving hacked money. As per the Rockstar Games Customer Support article (updated 2017-11-30), Update on GTA Online Cheaters and Modded GTA$ (emphasis mine):

Question: I heard GTA Online cheaters were causing large amounts of modded GTA$ to transfer to innocent players over the past few weeks. Is Rockstar Games aware of this, and what is being done?

Answer: We have received complaints over the past few weeks about cheaters gifting large amounts of GTA$ to others, setting bounty rewards outside game limits, or otherwise attempting to tamper with the GTA Online economy. We have deployed several hotfixes to prevent this type of activity, and will be adding further cheat protection in future Title Updates as well. Players who willingly cheated to create this illegitimate influx of in-game currency will be separated out from the rest of the population. If you were the unwilling recipient of an impossibly large amount of GTA$, you do not need to worry about disciplinary action against your account. However, please be aware that we will be making community-wide automatic adjustments to players’ account balances to remove the modded money.

Question: I was minding my own business and suddenly received a huge amount of money in GTA Online from a cheater. Am I in trouble?

Answer: To keep the gameplay environment as fair as possible for legitimate players, we routinely do sweeps to separate out cheaters and modders, and to reverse any illegitimate transactions. These sweeps are based on in-game automated detection, examination of suspicious gameplay statistics, and also manually-reviewed evidence submitted by the Community. If you were not engaged in any willful cheating or exploiting yourself, you do not need to worry about getting caught up in our work to separate out cheaters from the rest of the population.

Question: Do I need to report to Rockstar Games the fact that I was given a huge amount of modded money I didn’t want?

Answer: No, you do not need to report this. We are able to tell the difference, automatically through gameplay data, between the cheaters and the players who received this money innocently. Players who were willingly cheating are notified about any action taken against their account. If you were not cheating, you do not need to do anything further.