PayPal accidentally credits man USD 92 quadrillion

Oops! PayPal, the online money- transfer company, has accidentally credited a man in Delaware a whopping USD 92,233,720,368,547,800, making him by far the richest man in the world.

Chris Reynolds, 56, said he was shocked when he received his monthly statement via e-mail from PayPal last week, with an ending balance of USD 92 quadrillion, over a million times richer than the world's richest man, Carlos Slim.

The fortune of Slim, a Mexican telecommunications mogul, would pale in comparison at a mere USD 73 billion.

"I'm just feeling like a million bucks," Reynolds was quoted as saying by the Philadelphia Daily News. "At first I thought that I owed quadrillions. It was quite a big surprise."Reynolds said he has been a PayPal customer for about 10 years and uses it to buy and sell items on eBay, including vintage car parts. He said he usually spends no more than USD 100 a month using PayPal.

After absorbing the initial shock, Reynolds logged on to PayPal's site and saw that his balance was listed there as USD 0.

If the prodigious account credit were true, Reynolds - who with his wife owns Reynolds Ink, a public-relations firm - said he would pay down debts with the money. "I'm a very responsible guy," he said. "I would pay the national debt down first."

PayPal has admitted the error and offered to donate an unspecified amount of money to a cause of Reynolds' choice.

"This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case," CNN quoted PayPal as saying in a statement.