It's just a matter of scale. For some companies $250K is pocket lint.

Would you tell your wife your credit card number if she called you and told you her card is blocked for some reason and she needs to refill the gas tank or buy something?

A while ago a friend who I hadn't seen since 2011 messaged me on Facebook asking if I could take a look at his account on a guitar forum we both used to frequent, because he thought his account was stolen, but couldn't check it for activity without making a new one(and probably also having enough posts to be considered "in").

So I asked who sold him that Music Man Petrucci 7-string in 2009(or so) and after he answered correctly, I followed through with his request.

My point being: it helps to have such a question prepared for everyone - or alternatively - a question concerning some fact about you that only people who know you could answer.

Funnily, companies for whom $250k is pocket lint since they're big enough to have processes for payments and it's often incredibly difficult to circumvent those processes.

That's because this is not a usual request. It could be for the CEO - only they know how likely that was to happen.