If you got an email prompting you to click a link to get a check from “Grubhub Holdings Inc.,” you are actually eligible for that compensation. The D.C. Office of the Attorney General confirmed with WTOP that these payments are part of the $3.5 million settlement the food delivery company agreed to when it was sued by the District in 2022 for charging customers hidden fees and using deceptive marketing techniques. Grubhub users that ordered from a D.C. restaurant between Jan. 1, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2022, will be receiving settlement checks of varying amounts, depending on how much they ordered and how frequently they ordered food, according to the settlement. Eligible users will get a credit or check of at least $4.50, $7 or $10. The checks are delivered via email and include a link to download and print. The emails may have looked like a phishing scam to a few D.C. area residents, with some posting questions and concerns on Reddit and X, formerly known as Twitter.

So did @grubhub really just send out their settlement checks via an un-countersigned email from a third-party vendor, or are the scammers just particularly fast on this one?

— Dr Damien P Williams Warned You About Exactly This (@Wolven) August 10, 2023

Former Attorney General Karl Racine alleged that the company’s fee tactics violated the District’s consumer protection laws. Grubhub admitted no wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement. “Grubhub used every trick in the book to manipulate customers into paying far more than they owed, and even worse, they did so at the height of a global pandemic when District residents were already struggling to make ends meet,” Racine said in a Dec. 30 statement. WTOP’s Jeff Clabaugh contributed to this report.