It's more than that - this particular address is the coinbase output of the genesis block (block 0) and it's literally unspendable.
edit: I'm wrong, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
edit: I'm wrong, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
But any other payment made to that address/pubkey are perfectly spendable by whomever has the matching private key.
Though that misunderstanding is somewhat common, so it's not impossible that the payee believed that they were sending the coins to an unspendable address.