PayPal Credits Man With $92 Quadrillion

solareagle writes "Pennsylvania resident Chris Reynolds got quite a shock when he opened his most recent PayPal statement — it said he had a $92,233,720,368,547,800 balance in his account. 'I'm just feeling like a million bucks,' Reynolds told the [Philadelphia] Daily News yesterday. 'At first I thought that I owed quadrillions. It was quite a big surprise.' When asked what he would do with the money, he said, 'I would pay the national debt down first. Then I would buy the Phillies, if I could get a great price.' The Daily News speculates that the astronomical balance may be related to PayPal's new Galactic initiative, announced last month, to expand its business beyond Earth." He should have quickly minted a new coin.

Comments

Don't tell the tax man!

[Alain Williams]

Otherwise he will be asked to pay tax on his income! :-)

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[icebike]

We have yet to hear from the person who's account was debited by the same amount.
No doubt that guy is in hospital with a heart attack.

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[TWX]

Even the IRS' computers should choke on how to process that one for awhile...

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[intermodal]

I know exactly how they process that one. Hold sign with name nad numbers, photo from the front, photo from the side, fingerprints, get in your orange jumpsuit.

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[Bork]

If he had that money for one hour, that would mean he had a average income of $10,528,963,512,391 for this year, not counting any other income he might have had.

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[dimeglio]

You are obviously not a republican.

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[mysidia]

We have yet to hear from the person who's account was debited by the same amount. No doubt that guy is in hospital with a heart attack.

Naw... i'm sure he just fled the country.

Re:Don't tell the tax man!

[TheRaven64]

And it would not matter if it's a fiat currency or gold-backed currency

It would make a difference. If it were backed by gold, you could redeem it for the gold value, dump it in the sea, and then live on the continent made out of gold that you'd just built...

Signed integer overflow

[GerbilSoft]

2^63 - 1 == 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

Assuming PayPal's currency values are stored in cents, dividing that by 100 results in $92,233,720,368,547,758.07. Looks like a 64-bit signed integer overflowed (or in this case, underflowed), resulting in integer wraparound.

Re:Signed integer overflow

[id10t_corner]

This sounds like a Mycroft Holmes joke.

Re:Signed integer overflow

[Omega Hacker]

Not sure you quite get the concept of underflow.... If it's a 64-bit field in cents and he had $1, an unsigned subtract of $2 would result in a balance of $92,233,720,368,547,757.08 (give or take a few cents).

Re:Signed integer overflow

[The Rizz]

My brain vaguely recalls a Sherlock Holmes reference (father? brother?), but I've only read a few of the stories....

Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock's brother, but that's not the reference he's alluding to here - it's a reference to the computer named Mycroft Holmes in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Re:Signed integer overflow

[plover]

Ok, lets take your way.....

Someone updated the paypal software. And it affected EXACTLY one person.

Right. Dismissed.

Maybe the guy's name is Little Bobby Tables. That'll teach you to sanitize your PayPal names.

Re:Signed integer overflow

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids these days... When I was young we only had 2 billion on our hacked accounts.

Re:Signed integer overflow

[Culture20]

They clearly aren't using unsigned numbers since the huge number on the statement HAS A MINUS SIGN IN FRONT OF IT.

You can put a minus sign in front of anything. printf("-%u", X);

Re:Signed integer overflow

[TheRaven64]

From TFA, it sounds like the error was corrected very quickly, so it's not impossible to assume that only one person:

• Had a negative balance
• Was checking PayPal.com in the half hour window when the buggy software update was live (assuming that it's rolled out over everything, and they don't do phased updates for the front end like most big web companies)
• Took a screenshot of the massive negative balance
• Reported it to a journalist who had a sufficiently slow news day to write the story.

Man, slashdot *is* behind the times

[neminem]

I'd never really followed other similar news aggregators before, but I've been following Consumerist for a few months, and indeed, that blog tends to post interesting news a couple days before it ends up here. In fact, it just posted a followup story, that apparently when paypal heard that upon seeing the windfall, even though he the guy knew it wasn't real, he felt compelled to donate 30 dollars to a local charity, paypal offered the guy the chance to donate an unspecified but supposedly substantial amount to the charity of his choice as compensation for the mistake.

Re:Wondering...

[Bork]

Zimbabwe would be a good candidate.

Unlike Monopoly

[Freddybear]

Bank Error In Your Favor means you Go Directly To Jail if you try to spend the money.

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[king neckbeard]

The first step is to use the money to buy Switzerland. Then you have all of the Swiss banks accounts you'll ever need.

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[Spy Handler]

Paypal isn't a bank. He should've spent the money!

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

but in the US, paypal is NOT a bank... and in some places in the US, if a company screws up and sends/gives you something in error (such as an erroneous double shipment on a mail order) -- it's yours. you're not obligated to return it or pay for it.

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[AK Marc]

Most countries in the world yes, but not the US, what he should have done was put it in his bank, and get interest off whatever his bank would accept. A few million dollars an hour for PayPal's error, then give back the money when asked. Likely, he'd not have any charges, and get to keep a few million dollars for his trouble. Instead, he'll get nothing but some news articles.

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[Melkman]

A few hours ? If he had put it in an account with only 0,1% interest he would have earned almost 3 million dollar per second...

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[Charliemopps]

I'd imagine paypal wouldn't have been able to cover the transfer and that would have triggered some rather unwelcome repercussions rather quickly. I wonder if he could have flash-crashed their stock sending them out of business?

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[PPH]

then give back the money when asked.

Dear PayPal,

Realizing your mistake, I deposited the funds in a bank account for safekeeping and notified your accounting department immediately. I have authorized the funds release to you immediately. Please contact my bank, the First National bank of Nigeria at.....

Re:Unlike Monopoly

[mysidia]

Most banks will have an inbound ACH limit of around $10,000. I'm sure Paypal has an outgoing limit as well, that is well less than $100,000; let alone millions.

I can't math

[slashmydots]

"it said he had a $92,233,720,368,547,800 balance in his account. 'I'm just feeling like a million bucks"
Someone's not so good at math, lol.

Re:I can't math

[sootman]

He's a multi-quadrillionaire, he doesn't have to be good at math.

Re:there's not that much money in the world!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

They could have swung 100 billion in the '60s, or WWII for that matter. The US alone spent $249 billion on WWII -- in 1940s dollars.

Now colonial days, where the Louisiana Purchase was $79 million, forget it.

Re:Wondering...

[RevSpaminator]

I'm wondering how many other slobs rushed out to check their paypal accounts to see if something like that had happened to them. :)

Re:there's not that much money in the world!

[buswolley]

Of course, congress has the power to mint money. Hell the treasury can right now. As mush as we want. One cannot run out of money...The limitation is inflation. Only inflation. Its not debt. Its not tax dollars. Its inflation. The question the becomes, are we at risk of inflation if we helicopter-drop billions of dollars on the people? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how much capacity there is to meet the increase in demand. http://neweconomicperspectives.org/p/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html

92 Billiard Dollars

[acid_andy]

I prefer the term $92 billiard.

I know, the Long Scale is seen as very archaic these days but the short scale just seems to run out of puff too quick. Quadrillion, indeed!

uh oh

[slashmydots]

That's awfully suspicious. They better freeze Paypal's account, ignore all e-mails, refuse to admit they did it on support phone calls, and take 3 months to resolve it.

Re:there's not that much money in the world!

[mysidia]

The question the becomes, are we at risk of inflation if we helicopter-drop billions of dollars on the people? Maybe. Maybe not.

Our president blows a billion$$$ every day on gas money; helicopter-dropping a few billion would probably have no appreciable effect.

Frankly, the $1.5 trillion stimulus would have probably been better if he had divided the $1 trillion by $230 million people, and given every American individuals an equal amount, excluding individuals earning more than $80,000, and excluding individuals part of a married couple where the couple's earnings exceed $120,000 ; in other words.... approximately $40,000 extra money to be received by every American; instead of throwing away the $1 trillion on crappy programs and tax breaks for corporations.

Re:What would happen with a national debt of $0?

[Shados]

Probably all of these answers, but in the end, one thing we know for sure: if you paid the debt today, it would be back tomorrow.