Imagine waking up one morning, checking your email and learning that you've just inherited the tag of the richest man in the world. Not by a small margin either, but being told that you are a million times richer than the next man in the list. That's exactly what happened with a PR executive in Pennsylvania, CNN reports.
Chris Reynolds received his monthly PayPal statement and got the shock of his life when it indicated a balance of $92,233,720,368,547,800.00. That figure is a little north of $92 quadrillion. To put that in perspective, the richest man in the world, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has a net worth of $72,000,000,000 as per Forbes' 2013 estimates. In other words, his new found 'fortune' made Reynolds over a million times richer than Carlos Slim.
Of course, the riches didn't last long. Reynolds logged onto this PayPal account and discovered that the balance was exactly what he last remembered - a grand total of zero. Reynolds got in touch with PayPal who admitted that the statement was a mistake, and offered to contribute an unspecified amount to a cause of Reynolds' choice as compensation.
"This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case," PayPal told CNN.
When asked what he would have done if the piles of cash had been real, Reynolds said, he "probably would have paid down the national debt."