The air brimmed with the scent of fast food and the occasional sound of crunching taco shells. Aamil, at the wheel, was working his way through a diet Baja blast. “Yo, how much do I owe you again?” yelled Sebastian from the back seat.

“Y’all just look at the receipt and Venmo me whenever.” Aamil replied, unwrapping another taco. It was business as usual until his eyes flickered to me, a hint of mischief dancing in them. “Well, except you… your ass doesn’t have Venmo.”

Cue a gasp from Alex, the newest addition to our late-night Taco Bell ventures. “Who doesn’t have Venmo, Julian?” Aamil leaned back, a grin broadening across his face, “Yeah Julian, enlighten us. Why don’t you have Venmo?

I had played this scenario in my head, created a checklist of responses depending on who asked, and how well I knew them. Alex? He’s cool, a long-time buddy. But do I really want to dive into the real reason now? It was bound to invite a slew of questions, and all I really wanted was to enjoy my taco.

“Spill it. I wanna know,” said Alex, his eyes wide, his expression a mix of surprise and genuine curiosity. “I’m banned from Venmo, bro,” I confessed, seeing his brows furrow in puzzlement. “Banned? What did you do, rob Venmo’s virtual bank?” Here, I paused, took a deep breath, and decided to delve a little deeper into my Venmo escapade.

I told Alex everything, starting from the top. The story all began with just another Honey ad; however, this was not your everyday Honey ad. This one promised money in exchange for a referral. I was really into sweepstakes at the time, so I already knew what to do. I opened up my plethora of Chrome users, my email spreadsheet up, and grabbed my phone. The crucial detail enabling the exploitation was Venmo’s feature allowing users to modify the linked email address on their accounts. By signing up on Honey through my referral link and using an email already associated with my Venmo, it was inevitable that Honey would send that moola over. After a couple of self-referrals and confirming that this worked, I started to play around a bit with the URL. After having been in the sweepstakes space for a while, I was used to looking at links and noticing how they change as you navigate through the website. I did not expect anything to work this time though, I mean, this was Honey and Venmo, right? I looked at the URL: https://joinhoney.com/venmo5, and changed the number in the subdirectory to /venmo10. To my surprise, there existed a page and as it loaded in, I got really excited and tried a bigger number… /venmo15. The page loaded. My jaw dropped. It was game time. This was a pivotal moment, these links I had guessed were promotions that had yet to be advertised, but they were live. This meant that the /venmo5 promotion was bound to be used up really soon, given the community of people who jump on these types of promotions. However, with these new links, it was just me and potentially very few other people. It was time to dance.

 I knew I could never get too greedy with these things, especially not with Venmo. So after an hour of me referring my silly emails to Honey, I felt like I had juiced the promo a healthy amount. It was time to share with my friends online, who would always do me a solid and share what they found, I wouldn’t be in this space if it wasn’t for them. They were a little more ingenious than me, they found that URLs with /paypalX were real pages, and real promotions, just not any that had been advertised yet. This was incredible news, we had really hit the jackpot, so I swiftly got to work on my PayPal. I did many instant withdrawals from both my Venmo and PayPal that night, since activity like this could definitely raise some flags. I went to sleep extremely content that night, 

“But yeah, it was all fun and games until a couple days later, I remember it so vividly, I get an email from Venmo telling me that my account was suspended,” which wasn’t a total surprise to me, I was sort of bracing for it, but I was just bummed because Venmo was just starting to grow on me. Alex leaned back, absorbing all the information I just spilled, the last bite of his cheesy gordita crunch in his hand. “Holy shit, bro, you gotta put me on next time!” “Yeah bro, for sure,” which was my default response, but I did mean it. Sebastian and Aamil had tuned out the conversation since they’d heard it many times before. I remember spamming them when it was happening too, but they weren’t as interested in exploiting promotions as I was. “Alright boys I’m done but I got two questions, why am I not hearing Young Thug in my ears and where are we headed,” which was honestly a seamless transition into the rest of the night. 

The Venmo interrogation went pretty smoothly with Alex, he wasn’t too judgy and I knew him pretty well. However, with acquaintances, I have a harder time navigating through this since they tend to pry. This is unlike people I don’t really know, who usually don’t ask questions, or whom I’ve already asked if they take Zelle. But it’s difficult with acquaintances because I fear being seen as a “scammer,” something my friends label me as to poke fun at me. If for some reason I or a friend let it slip to an acquaintance that I’m banned from Venmo, I usually put off the conversation for later, unless they’re really intrigued. Most of the time, to make my life easier, I just tell people that I don’t use Venmo.

I am hopeful that someday I can appeal the suspension, maybe come to them with a sob story or a moving apology. After about a year of the ban, I was allowed to comment and like my friends’ transactions, which is fun, it’s like I’m stuck in spectator mode now. I think I’ll definitely use that next time someone asks me to Venmo them, “I’m in spectator mode bro,” and maybe that’ll make them laugh and allow me to transition into asking if I can use Zelle or PayPal (which luckily, did not suspend me).