For a brief moment, he was the planet’s only quadrillionaire
A man in America very briefly became the richest person in the world after he was accidentally credited with $92 quadrillion.
Back in July 2013, Chris Reynolds logged on to his PayPal account to find that he had erroneously been credited with an unfathomable amount of money.
The Pennsylvania PR executive’s account balance had swelled to not just a six or seven figure sum, but a ridiculous 17-figure sum of $92,233,720,368,547,800.
That’s $92 quadrillion – with a bit left over – and meant that he was briefly richest person in the world and the only quadrillionaire on Earth.
In fact, he was 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.”
Previously, the most he had ever made on PayPal was “a little over $1,000” selling a set of vintage BMW tyres on eBay. Quite literally a wheeler dealer.
Unfortunately for him, PayPal quickly realised what had happened and corrected the problem.
In a statement at the time the company said: “This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case.”
But they did offer to donate an undisclosed amount of money to a charity of Reynolds’ choice.
He 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.”
Related links:
- Meet the company selling $100m luxury bunkers so the rich can survive the apocalypse in style
- Mark Zuckerberg has lost more than half his fortune this year
- MrBeast is the richest creator in the world as Forbes releases 2022’s top 50 list
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