A DAD got the surprise of his life when he opened up his bank account to find he had been paid almost £50BILLION.
Darren James was stunned when he saw the nine-zero figure had appeared after receiving a frantic call from his wife.
The dad-of-two, from Louisiana in the US, saw on his banking app there was a staggering deposit of $50billion (£43.4billion).
And the banking blunder would have made him one of the richest men in the world.
The staggering fortune would have ranked him at 25 on the current Forbes World's Billionaires List.
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His lucky break saw him briefly worth more than ten times than Virgin boss Richard Branson and seven times wealthier than James Dyson.
But for Darren however, his brush with billions was short-lived and his life-changing windfall vanished.
His wife had asked him to sit down before revealing the huge sum that had appeared in their checking account with Chase.
"It was crazy just to see what it looks like because I've never seen that many zeros in my life," he told BR Proud.
"I’m like where did that come from?" he told FOX9 in a separate interview after the confusion in June 2021.
"And all we were thinking was who’s going to be knocking on our door…because we don’t know anybody with that type of money to begin with."
The story has resurfaced as one mum bought a house with an erroneous £6million deposit from Crypto.com.
Thevamanogari Manivel was due to receive a £60 refund from cryptocurrency exchange - but instead received the mega-sum.
The company accidentally entered an account number in the field that was meant to be the cash amount.
Ms Manivel, from Melbourne, Australia then spent a large chunk on a plush house and shipped the rest off to other accounts.
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She had splashed out £800,000 on a five-bedroom, four-bathroom house as a “gift” for her sister, Thilagavathy Gangadory.
The rest of the wrongful payment was then dished out between six other people, including her daughter and sister.
Her luck came crashing down when the mistake was realised during routine audit - and legal proceedings have begun.
Darren however fessed up to what happened and arranged to give the money back.
The 47-year-old said he momentarily fantasized that the money may have been sent to them by an unknown rich relative, but reality soon set in and he contacted Chase for help.
"We knew it wasn't ours," he said. "We didn’t earn it, so we couldn’t do anything with it."
As a former law enforcement officer for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety, the now-real estate agent also said he knew attempting to keep the cash would be considered theft.
After his call, James said Chase began working to reverse the error right away.
However, the bank did not disclose to him why the $50billion had been deposited or where the funds came from.
Within days, the money had disappeared from the James' account.
"It was a hold placed on it. It showed up on Saturday to make a deposit for our daughter. It stayed there Sunday, Monday and Tuesday it was gone."
James said he and his family enjoyed the thrill of feeling like one of the world's richest families, even if it was just for a matter of days.
Should he ever achieve his dream of becoming a billionaire in his own right, James said he'd use his wealth to help others, such as building children's hospitals.
"I would bless other people—to give people hope that there is positive in this world," he continued. "That’s what my biggest dream is."
Recipients of erroneous bank deposits are not entitled to keep the money.
In most circumstances, the bank in question will spot the error and reverse the transaction automatically.
Anyone who spends the money is likely to be hit with criminal charges.
