When Chris Reynolds opened his June PayPal e-mail statement, something was off.
The Pennsylvania PR executive’s account balance had swelled to a whopping $92,233,720,368,547,800.
That’s $92 QUADRILLION (and change).
Money that would make Reynolds — who also sells auto parts on eBay in his spare time — the richest man in the world by a long shot.
Rich, as in more than a million times richer than Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim. And he’s worth $67 billion.
Oh, if only.
“It’s a curious thing. I don’t know, maybe someone was having fun,” Reynolds said.
So he logged online, and reality bit back. His account balance read $0. The correct amount.
PayPal admitted the error and offered to donate an unspecified amount of money to a cause of Reynolds’ choice.
“This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case,” PayPal said in a statement.
Before this incident, the most Reynolds ever made on PayPal was “a little over $1,000″ selling a set of vintage BMW tires on eBay.
So what would the would-be quadrillionaire have done with all that cash?
“I probably would have paid down the national debt,” he said.
via PayPal accidentally credits man $92 quadrillion – CNN.com.
Great answer. I’d say $94 quad and some change would make some kind of dent in the US national debt. Actually, to be fair, the current National Debt Clock says the Outstanding Public Debt as of July 18, 2013 at 4:12 AM GMT is $16,741,104,624,437. So, after paying off the national debt he’d still have $94 quadrillion, with $16.7 trillion less pocket change. PayPal could buy America with this mistake!