Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim was briefly pushed from the top spot of the richest person in the world after an American man accidentally received $92 quadrillion.
When all of us fantasise about winning the lottery – you’re lying if you say you don’t – we probably dream of a solid few hundred thousand, or a few million would be nice. I highly doubt most of us venture into thinking about winning trillions – and certainly not quadrillions.
Yes, quadrillions, a word none of us ever heard thrown around often because the quantity is quite so ridiculously large. However, the word ended up being used a lot by one man after he woke up to find an eye-watering $92 quadrillion sitting in his Paypal account.
The 56-year-old’s balance had an additional $92,233,720,368,547,800 on top.
The moment may’ve sadly been brief – we’ll get on to that later – but it did mean Slim was momentarily knocked from his top spot – worth $67 billion at the time – with Reynolds made the richest man and only quadrillionaire on earth.
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.
Alas, 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.
“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’ve done if 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.”
