Pennsylvania man logs into PayPal and finds $92,000,000,000,000,000. He thought he’d won the ultimate lottery

Chris Reynolds, a 56-year-old public relations executive from Media, Pennsylvania, had an unusual experience in July 2013 when he opened his monthly PayPal statement. The balance showed a huge number that would briefly make him the wealthiest person on the planet.

Reynolds first thought he owed money when he saw the huge number on his statement. “At first I thought that I owed quadrillions,” he said, according to CS Monitor. “It was quite a big surprise.” The statement showed a balance of $92,233,720,368,547,800, which is $92 quadrillion and change.

The amount would have made Reynolds the richest person in the world by far, beating Mexican telecom boss Carlos Slim, who was worth $67 billion at the time. Reynolds would have been more than a million times richer than Slim. But when Reynolds logged into his actual PayPal account online to check the numbers, reality hit him quickly. His account balance showed the correct amount of $0.

What Reynolds would have done with the money

When asked about his plans for the huge fortune, Reynolds showed a sense of duty mixed with personal wishes. “I’d want to pay down the US national debt. That’s been really bugging me,” Reynolds said. The national debt at that time was much smaller than his temporary balance, which meant he could have paid it off more than 5,000 times over.

After dealing with the national debt, Reynolds had simpler plans. “I’m just a modest man. I would want to buy something for myself, maybe the Philadelphia Phillies, if I could get a great price. The rest of it, I’d invest, because that’s what my father-in-law would want me to do,” he said. Reynolds, who started the PR firm Reynolds Ink with his wife, also sold auto parts on eBay in his free time. Before this happened, the most he had ever made online was a little over $1,000 from selling old BMW tires.

PayPal quickly saw the mistake and said sorry to Reynolds for the error. The company offered to give money to a charity of his choice. “This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case,” PayPal said in a statement. 

Even though he lost his quadrillionaire status within minutes, Reynolds found something good in the experience. Friends he had not talked to in years reached out after he shared the story on Facebook. “I’m enjoying a brief transit as an Internet meme,” Reynolds said. Just like other financial glitches that have affected users, the PayPal error was fixed quickly, but not before giving Reynolds his brief moment as the world’s richest person.