Every once in a while, some of us will receive that rarest of gifts - receiving money that wasn't intended for us. Sure it's a windfall that comes with its own moral questions, but also, the thrill of finding or being accidentally sent money, especially when it's from a major corporation, is unbeatable.
Now imagine you logged onto your PayPal account to discover NINETY TWO QUADRILLION DOLLARS sitting in there.
No, that's not a typo. Once more, just to clarify: NINETY TWO QUADRILLION DOLLARS.
Well, for a brief few minutes back in 2013, this was the reality facing Pennsylvania man Chris Reynolds, of Delaware County.
Reynolds opened his account one day in July of 2013 to discover $92,233,720,368,547,800 had been wrongly credited to him. Just to clarify how vast a sum of money that is, there's a good chance there's not even that much money circulating on earth.
Speaking to the Philadelphia Daily News, Reynolds said the transfer had left him "feeling like a million bucks".
"At first I thought I owed quadrillions. It was quite a big surprise."
Reynolds said that, had the money remained in his account (which, again, for obvious reasons, it couldn't have) he would have used it to "pay the national debt down".
Before becoming a quadrillionaire, Reynolds' PayPal payments had topped out at "a little over $1,000" for selling a set of vintage BMW tires. Sadly for the Delaware County native, however, PayPal realized their mistake and quickly reversed it, apologizing to Reynolds for the "inconvenience".
A PayPal company statement read via CNN, "This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case."
Once the money was taken back out of Mr.Reynolds' account, PayPal did offer to donate an undisclosed amount to a charity of his choosing.
A further 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!"
Speaking of the incident at the time, Reynolds said, "It’s a curious thing. I don’t know, maybe someone was having fun.”
PayPal have never explained how the transfer occurred, but we're gutted for Mr.Reynolds that he didn't at least have a few minutes to spend some of his newfound quadrillions before they were taken away again.
