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When you've got nothing, there's a general expectation that you've also got nothing left to lose. But sometimes that's not the case.

A homeless man in California who set a massively destructive forest fire was sentenced to four years in prison by a court this week, and ordered to pay $101 million. That money is due to be paid in quarterly installments of $25 for the years Steven Emory Butcher is in prison, and then $50 per month when he's out. After putting Asylum's team of accountants on the case, we found it will take Butcher a total of 168,337 years to pay off his debt to society at that rate.

Slate's Christopher Beam took up the question of why the court should even concoct such a number when it's clear Butcher is never going to pay it back. It turns out restitution is based on the amount of property lost by the victim -- not on what the convict is able to pay. The 2006 fire that Butcher set cost an estimated $59 million in damages -- that and the cost of "fire suppression" were factored in when coming up with the figure.

However, if Butcher feels inspired to pay off the entire amount, we recommend he come up with a really clever sign like the folks in the gallery below.