A family from the US state of Louisiana received $50 billion (or about 42 billion euros) into their account earlier this month. For four days they were a newcomer to the list of the 25 richest people on earth, until the error was corrected.
Darren James, 47, told Fox he surprised his wife on June 12 when she showed him her bank balance. We just thought: Who will be at our door next? We don’t know anyone with that much money.”
James, who works as a real estate agent, admits that he briefly thought about transferring the money: “As long as the money was there, it was a great feeling. Having so many zeros in your bank account is weird.”
Billionaire for four days
Darren James and his wife called the bank on Saturday, June 12, to clarify the situation. The money wasn’t debited until Tuesday. “I was a billionaire for four days. It was a great feeling, even though we couldn’t do anything with it.”
“We knew it wasn’t ours, so we couldn’t do anything with it. We couldn’t spend it, that would be a theft,” said James, who said about 150 other American families had received an incorrect amount around the same time.
Speaking to Fox, a spokesman for the bank said the company was dealing with a “technical issue”.
Julia Junkowski, from Florida, faced a similar situation recently: She found $1 billion in her bank account when she wanted to withdraw a much smaller amount. According to WFLA, her receipt said she had $999,985,855.94 in her account after she withdrew $20.
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