Richest man of all-time gained and lost his entire wealth in two minutes
Most of us have spent some time imagining what we’d do if we won the lottery or somehow became a millionaire another way, haven’t we?
Whether you dream of dramatically quitting your job, booking yourself the holiday of a lifetime or sorting out your loved ones for the rest of their lives - most of us have few ideas of how we’d set about spending your millions.
But what if instead of dreaming it, the money actually landed in your account? And I’m not talking millions - but multi-quadrillions.
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Well, that’s exactly what happened to one bloke from the US who became the richest person of all-time for a very brief moment before he lost it all again a short while later. Easy come, easy go, eh?
Chris Reynolds opened his PayPal account one day in July 2013 to find his account had been credited with a whopping $92 quadrillion - $92,233,720,368,547,800 (£73,033,270,002,102,580) to be exact - briefly making him the richest man and the only quadrillionaire to walk the Earth.
Various news outlets that had caught wind of the event were quick to point out that, at the time, the Delaware County man was a million times richer than telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who's net worth was a gigantic $67 billion.
Recounting the moment, Reynolds told CNN: "It’s a curious thing,"
“I don’t know, maybe someone was having fun.”
It must have been quite a shock to the system for Reynolds as he recalled that the most he'd ever made through PayPal was ‘a little over $1,000’ from selling some vintage BMW tyres on eBay.
Unfortunately, as all good things do come to an end, with PayPal quickly realising their error and correcting the issue, apologising to Reynolds for the 'inconvenience' caused.
PayPal released a statement saying: “This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case.”
The online payment service offered to donate a sum of money to a charity of Reynold's choice as payment for the mishap.
A later statement then 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 honour 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!"
In an interview with Philadelphia Daily News, who originally broke the wild story, Reynolds told the reporter that seeing those figures on his account made him feel ‘like a million bucks’.
“It was quite a big surprise," said Reynolds, admitting he originally thought it meant he owed the money and not that it was in his possession at the time.
The news outlet asked Reynolds what he would have done with the money if he could have kept it, to which he said he'd 'pay the national debt down', adding that he would buy 'the Phillies' (the baseball franchise, if you were wondering) if he could get a good price.
Claire Reid