Khaberni - An ordinary trip to buy a coffee cup turned into a bizarre event that suddenly placed a British young woman at the forefront of the world's richest list, vastly outperforming Elon Musk, thanks to a technical error in a 10-pound sterling voucher only.
In detail, Sophie Downing (29 years old), who lives in Nottingham, had received a 10-pound sterling voucher for "200 Degrees Coffee" on last Christmas.
When she went to buy a cup of coffee during a lunch break on Thursday, February 12, the cashier was astounded when an astronomical number appeared on the payment screen.
After receiving the receipt, Sophie discovered that her card balance exceeded 63 quadrillion pounds sterling (i.e., the number 63 followed by 15 zeros, a huge amount equal to a thousand trillion or a million billion).
This enormous amount, although it is non-withdrawable in cash and can only be spent inside the café branches on coffee and croissant rolls only, made Downing theoretically the richest woman in history, surpassing her closest competitor, the American billionaire Elon Musk, by about 100,000 times and exceeding about 670 times the total size of the global economy.
Sophie commented on the situation saying: "It was hilariously funny, I have never seen anything like this before.. The employee's face showed great confusion and he told me that he had never seen this number before but I could keep the card".
Later, Sophie used the card again on Tuesday, February 17, to find that the huge balance was still the same, but she believes that the error resulted from scanning the card's "barcode" and treating it as a cash balance rather than its actual value.
Despite her theoretical ability to buy "everything in the café", Sophie confirmed that she decided to stop using the card out of respect for honesty, saying: "I don't want to exploit the situation badly," and added laughing: "Perhaps it would have been better if the voucher was for another store."
So far, there has been no official comment from the management of "200 Degrees" café about this unique technical error, which turned a simple coffee card into an unprecedented digital fortune.
