How to return an object in laravel 5.2

I need to retu an object of class User in laravel 5.2 but all I get is 'Undefined variable: user' and I am sure that I am logged and there is an instance of the User. The code is:

$name = 'Random';
$this->createCustomer($name);

dd($user);

public function createCustomer($name) {
    $user = Auth::user();
    $user ->name = $name
    retu $user;
}

All I get at the end is 'Undefined variable: user'

Thanks for your help