Chris Reynolds had big plans for the money before it was all taken from him

What would you do if you checked your banking app one day and spotted $92,233,720,368,547,800 just sitting there?

Admittedly it’s hard to imagine what that would even look like – can that many numbers even fit on one screen?

I don’t know, but one man who would is Chris Reynolds, who briefly held the title of the richest person in the world before the money suddenly disappeared again.

The bizarre situation unfolded in July 2013, when Reynolds opened up his Paypal account and was baffled to see a 17-figure sum sitting in his account, on top of the money that he expected to see in there.

The balance meant that Reynolds had officially overtaken Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim as the richest person in the world at the time, when Slim had a net worth of $67 billion.

Before the unexpected credit appeared in his account, Reynolds said the most he had ever made on PayPal was ‘a little over $1,000’, which he’d received by selling a set of vintage BMW tyres on eBay.

The credit made him the only quadrillionaire at the time (PayPal/Chris Reynolds)

Speaking about his sudden wealth in an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Reynolds said that the huge sum made him feel ‘like a million bucks’.

“At first I thought that I owed quadrillions,” he said. “It was quite a big surprise.”

If he’d been able to keep the money, Reynolds had big plans to ‘pay the national debt down’ and then ‘buy the Phillies’, referring to the Philadelphia baseball team.

Only if he could ‘get a great price’ for the team, that is.

Unfortunately, however, Reynolds’ sudden wealth was stripped away almost as quickly as it arrived, when PayPal realized what had happened and apologized to Reynolds for the ‘inconvenience’.

I’m not sure I’d call becoming the richest person in the world an ‘inconvenience’, but alright.

In a statement, the company said: “This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case.”

Paypal withdrew the money from Reynolds’ account, but it did offer to donate an undisclosed amount of money to a charity of Reynolds’ choice.

“We think it’s inspiring that he decided to use this occurrence to donate to a cause he believes in,” Paypal added.

“And we hope to honor 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!”