For four days, the James family from Louisiana in the US was among the richest in the world after their bank accidentally deposited $50 billion into their account.

But instead of thanking their lucky stars for their sudden fortune, they decided to call the bank to find out what was going on.

“I’m like, ‘Where did that come from?’” Darren James told Fox News. “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.”

And although he admitted that for a minute he hoped that some rich uncle died and bequeathed his family the fortune, he knew that was highly unlikely, and called the Chase Bank to find out.

“We knew it wasn’t ours. We didn’t earn it, so we couldn’t do anything with it,” he told the outlet.

The former police officer also knew that if he kept the money, it’d be considered theft.

I was a billionaire for four days … It was a cool feeling, even though you couldn’t do anything with it,” the father of two said. “It was a great feeling while it was there to see that many zeroes in your account … It was pretty neat to see what it looked like.”

He added that the cash was deposited into their account on 12 June, and removed on June 15.

Meanwhile a spokesperson for Chase Bank said in a statement to Fox that they corrected the error.

“We had a technical glitch over a week ago impacting a limited number of accounts,” the statement said. “The issue has been resolved and those accounts are now showing accurate balances.”