We’ve all fantasized about what it would be like to win the lottery overnight and become millionaires. For a man in Pennsylvania, it really happened, and the best part is that he hadn’t bought any tickets.
A glitch in the PayPal app meant that, at least for a while, Chris Reynolds, a public relations executive from Pennsylvania, felt first-hand what it was like to be the richest man who ever lived. It’s a feeling that few people have experienced, and Reynolds is one of them. He’s had his fun.
The “pleasant” surpriseChris Reynolds used to sell used car parts on eBay. One morning in July 2013, he turned on his computer to see that his PayPal balance was still at $140. What he found was mind-boggling: his account showed a balance of $92,233,720,368,547,800. Yes, $92.233 trillion.
The man confessed to the local newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer He was initially confused. “It was a big surprise, I thought it was a huge debt.” Fortunately, he soon found out that the balance was not negative, but positive. This made him the richest person in the world, unbeatable even if the ten richest people in the world added their fortunes together.
Ephemeral joyReynolds’ joy was short-lived, as PayPal must have sounded all the alarms when someone discovered that the company had transferred to a single person the equivalent of the GDP of the entire planet for the next 92,000 years.
Paypal quickly corrected the error, leaving Reynolds’ balance in the same state as it was before the shock. However, between leaps of joy, the man had time to make a transaction with his new fortune.
Shared fortune tastes better. During the two short minutes that Chris Reynolds was the richest man on the face of the earth, the newly minted billionaire had time to make a $30 donation from his PayPal account to the Democratic ticket for Delaware County Council. When he logged back in, the money was gone.
“Good fortune moved me to be generous,” the lucky accidental millionaire told the local media. Of all the purchases and transfers he could have made, Reynolds chose to share his fortune, even if it was in the form of a modest contribution.
PayPal’s response. Beyond correcting the error immediately, PayPal detected the nature of the transfer that Reynolds had made, which led them to contact the now ex-millionaire.
After sincerely apologizing for the incident, the PayPal representative offered to cover Reynolds’ first instinct by making an undisclosed donation to a charitable cause of Chris Reynolds’ choosing.
“This was obviously a mistake and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood that this was the case,” PayPal said in a statement to the BBC. “We think it is an inspiring gesture that Mr. Reynolds has decided to use this idea to donate to a cause he believes in. We hope to honor this spirit by donating to a cause of his choice – we have reached out to him to make this offer and to let him know that we are grateful that he is a customer.”
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Imagen | Unsplash (Alexander Grey), Wikimedia Commons (Yaeli778)