Man became richest person in the world for two minutes with $92 quadrillion
Dominic Smithers
Featured Image Credit: NBC/PayPal/Chris Reynolds
What would you do if you woke up and you were the richest person on the planet?
Well, while you and I will have to dream long and hard about that hypothetical scenario, it actually happened to one person.
Yep, a decade ago, Chris Reynolds opened his PayPal account to find that he was a whole lot richer, to the tune of $92 quadrillion. So many zeros.
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In July 2013, the 56-year-old had for some unknown reason been credited with an eye-watering amount, which looks like this $92,233,720,368,547,800.
This meant that for a very brief moment in time, he was the only person on the face of the Earth who could claim to be a quadrillionaire.
Understandably, when the news got out, the country's media wanted to know all about it.
“It’s a curious thing,” Reynolds, from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, told CNN.
“I don’t know, maybe someone was having fun.”
Prior to the bizarre turn of fortune, Reynolds said the most money he had ever had in his PayPal account was 'a little over $1,000', which he'd made from selling tires on eBay.
However, as we said, his time as the richest man in the world only lasted for a very brief moment.
When staff at PayPal realised what had happened, they fixed the issue and apologised to Reynolds for the whole mishap.
In a statement, the company said: “This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case.”
Reynolds actually had a pretty selfless way of spending the money if he'd been allowed to keep it.
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."
After the issue was resolved, PayPal offered to donate an undisclosed amount of money to a charity of Reynolds’ choice.
It probably wasn't $92 quadrillion.
"We think it's inspiring that he decided to use this occurrence to donate to a cause he believes in," the firm said in a follow-up statement.
"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."