Jess Hardiman
A man in America very briefly became the richest person in the world after he was accidentally credited with $92 quadrillion.
Many of us fantasise about winning the lottery so that we can live out the rest of our lives in luxury, but one man in the US landed the levels of wealth that not even our wildest dreams could materialise, after quadrillions suddenly appeared in his Paypal account.
Back in July 2013, 56-year-old Chris Reynolds opened up his account to find that Paypal had erroneously credited him with $92,233,720,368,547,800.
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This briefly made him the world’s richest man, and also the only quadrillionaire on Earth.
At the time, various news outlets pointed out that this made him more than a million times richer than Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who was worth a cool $67 billion.
“It’s a curious thing,” Reynolds, from Delaware County, told CNN.
“I don’t know, maybe someone was having fun.”
Before the unexpected credit appeared in his account, Reynolds said the most he had ever made on PayPal was ‘a little over $1,000’ selling a set of vintage BMW tyres on eBay.
Sadly for him, however, the panicked folk at PayPal soon realised what had happened and corrected the problem, and apologised to him for the 'inconvenience'.
The company said in a statement: “This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case.”
After withdrawing the money upon realising the mistake, PayPal offered to donate an undisclosed amount of money to a charity of Reynolds’ choice.
A later statement said: "We think it's inspiring that he decided to use this occurrence to donate to a cause he believes in.
"And we hope to honor this spirit by donating to a cause of his choice – we've reached out to him to make this offer and to let him know we are grateful that he's a customer!"
Reynolds told the Philadelphia Daily News, which originally broke the story, that the huge sum made him feel ‘like a million bucks’.
"At first I thought that I owed quadrillions,” he said.
“It was quite a big surprise."
When asked what he would have done had he been able to keep the money, he said he'd have used it to ‘pay the national debt down’.
Reynolds added: “Then I would buy the Phillies, if I could get a great price."
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