Chris Reynolds is your average small-town Pennsylvania resident who uses PayPal to buy and sell vintage car parts on eBay. While a fun hobby, he never expected it to make him successful beyond his wildest dreams or anything — so you can imagine his surprise when he received his monthly statement in the mail and found that PayPal had mistakenly credited him with approximately $92 quadrillion. Geez oh man, think all of the overpriced hair twigs you could buy on Etsy with that kind of money! Like, at least eight or nine very fancy, very overpriced twigs.
The official figure listed in the statement was $92,233,720,368,547,800, which would have made Reynolds the richest man in the entire world. Unfortunately the fortune was only temporary, as Reynolds immediately logged into his account after opening the statement and found his balance to be $0 instead. Womp womp.
PayPal, for their part, admitted to the error and offered to donate an unspecified amount of money to the cause of Reynold’s choice. Inspired by the imaginary windfall, Reynolds also made his own donation to a local candidate for the Delaware County Council, because he’s a ridiculously practical guy.
When asked what he would do if he were allowed to keep all the money, he said to Philly.com, “I would pay the national debt down first. Then I would buy the Phillies, if I could get a great price.” I must be a horrible person, because my first thought was to buy a nice brownstone in Manhattan and then maybe pay off the debt with the leftovers — you know, not that there’d be a lot left after that.
(via Mashable)
- Learn some more about Paypal Galactic
- Too bad he won’t be able to sue them for that cash
- Want to hate Paypal more than you already do? Read this
