Cash Drop Craze: How Mystery Money Hunts Became a Viral Business Model

On a sunny afternoon in a New York park, someone in white gloves places a thick roll of cash into an empty Doritos bag and tosses it beneath a tree. The camera captures unsuspecting people nearby, oblivious to the treasure. Within hours, an Instagram account called @nyc_money_hunt posts the video with a simple caption: "Finders keepers. Tag us when you find the cash." The next day, 200 miles north in Boston, a different account called @passpassbos makes a similar move, hiding money and inviting followers to hunt it down. Within minutes, winners appear on camera, clutching their prizes. Losers arrive seconds too late.

This is no longer a novelty. Cash drop accounts have become a fixture across American cities, with more than 50 accounts spanning roughly two dozen cities and collectively commanding over 7 million followers. The money gets hidden in candy bags, envelopes, taped to walls, stuffed into tree hollows, buried in trash bins, locked inside paint cans. Sometimes it's wrapped around basketballs or footballs that winners also keep. The hunters arrive however they can—on foot, by bike, in cars, sprinting from offices in business casual, arriving from apartments in whatever they were wearing. One cop was spotted searching a garden bed, hoping to win the cash himself.

What began as a curiosity has evolved into a genuine business. PassPass, one of the larger operations, was founded by brothers Kristopher and Edgel Groves about two years ago. They initially pursued a discount platform modeled on Groupon, but struggled with user acquisition costs. Then they tried something different: cash drops as marketing. The videos performed so well that they built an entire ecosystem around the concept. Today, PassPass operates city-specific accounts like @PassPassChicago, which collectively generate between 100 and 150 million views monthly. The company's app has roughly 200,000 registered users who can play free arcade games for a chance at prizes, or pay for subscriptions that unlock bonus entries, travel deals, and hints about upcoming drop locations. Other accounts tie drops to local business sponsorships—personal injury attorneys, restaurants, youth soccer clubs—while some remain purely anonymous, their only product the account itself and the mystery it generates.

The revenue model is diverse. Sponsorships from local businesses form the backbone for many accounts. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube pay based on views, and the millions of video impressions add up. For accounts with large followings, there are also first-party data opportunities: names and emails collected from people interested in sponsored giveaways. Kristopher Groves acknowledged the variety of revenue streams available to savvy operators. When asked if this is merely a fad born from economic hardship, he was dismissive. "When in the history of humanity have people been tired of free money?" he asked. He recalled a man who arrived in a Lamborghini, found the cash, and immediately asked when the next drop would be.

Jessica Rauchberg, who studies content creators at the University of Leeds School of Media and Communication, sees the phenomenon as a cultural marker. "This is tied to a larger cultural moment," she said, pointing to growing inflation and economic uncertainty as context. The anonymity of accounts like NYC Money Hunt—which shows only white-gloved hands and has accumulated over 400,000 Instagram followers—appeals to audiences fatigued by traditional influencers. Rauchberg noted that faceless accounts benefit from mystery and intrigue while avoiding the overt salesmanship that has made influencer marketing feel inauthentic. "There's a larger reckoning of what we're calling the influencer recession," she explained. Audiences are beginning to recognize that content creation, while appearing grounded in reality, often is not.

The human dimension of these drops is harder to quantify but perhaps more revealing. In December, when PassPass conducted a drop in Pittsburgh, a woman named Nicole came running into the cold, out of breath, clutching a box of cash she'd stuffed under her sweatshirt. "It is a merry Christmas," she told reporters. "It's going to help a lot." On January 24, NYC Money Hunt left a large sum of cash in a Juici Patties takeout container at a downtown Brooklyn location as part of a sponsored promotion. Latoya Samuel, an employee behind the counter, watched a woman find it and begin to cry. "She was saying, 'I can buy this for my child, I can buy that for my child,'" Samuel recalled. A newer employee at the same store, who follows the account, offered her own perspective: "It's just fun. Gives you some hope. A lot of people really need it."

Skeptics exist. Some social media users have posted videos and comments speculating without evidence that the drops are staged or the wins fabricated. CBS News was unable to track down any of the winners from NYC Money Hunt's more than 100 drops, though a witness to one described a woman in tears upon discovering the money. The account's operators have declined to answer detailed questions, offering only that they are "incredibly passionate about both the brand and the business." Whether this model will endure remains an open question. Kristopher Groves and his brother have wondered aloud if it's merely a temporary phenomenon, a product of economic desperation. But they concluded otherwise. The drops continue, the videos accumulate millions of views, and people keep running.