The story of a man who won the lottery 14 times (15 photos)

The story of Stefan Mandel, “the man who broke the system” or, as he is also called “who cheated the lottery,” began in the now distant 60s of the last century, when Romania was going through extremely difficult times, and Mandel himself was barely making ends meet.





Stefan Mandel

The young economist’s salary at that time did not exceed 360 lei (about 10 US dollars), and, of course, it was extremely difficult to live on such a modest salary, even taking into account the hunger and poverty that reigned in the country.



Stefan Mandel

Stefan Mandel understood that this could not continue, and he needed to find money somewhere... big money, and preferably quickly. But Mandel did not want to follow the criminal path that many of his compatriots followed in search of a livelihood. He saw a slightly different, simple and at the same time complex way out of the situation - a lottery.





Stefan Mandel

However, the young economist did not want to play “by the rules” and hope for luck - this would be too stupid a decision. Moreover, Mandel did not believe in miracles, but he believed in numbers, which were his little passion. Mandel devoted all his free time from his work as an accountant to the study of theoretical works on probability - ancient treatises written in the 13th century by the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci.



Stefan Mandel

The result of studying these works was a “number selection algorithm”, which was based on Mandel’s own method called “combinatorial condensation”, which he used to play the lottery.



Description of the Mandel method

Oh yes, the name indeed sounds incredibly complicated, but the principle of operation of this method is quite simple to understand. If a player chooses 6 numbers from 49 balls, then his chances of winning are 1 in 13,983,816. If he chooses 15 numbers (which requires buying 5,005 games - one for each possible combination), then the chances of winning increase to 1 to 2,794. Mandel claimed that his algorithm could reduce these 5,005 combinations to just 569.



Stefan Mandel and lottery tickets

If 6 winning numbers are among the 15 selected options, this guarantees the player at least a 2nd prize and hundreds of smaller prizes. In addition, the player has a 1 in 10 chance of winning the main prize.



Lottery

Of course, Mandel would hardly have been able to test his plan in practice alone, so he involved four of his friends in this matter, who, under his strict guidance, bought 228 tickets for one circulation. And what do you think happened next? That's right, Stefan Mandel won the main prize of 72,783 lei (at that time approximately $15,000). However, he was not going to stop there and, having paid off all financial expenses, with the remaining money he bribed officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and fled from Romania to start a new life and try to hit a bigger jackpot.



Stefan Mandel

For more than 4 years, Stefan Mandel traveled around Europe in search of “his” place, but ultimately settled in Australia, where he decided to make money in his favorite way - to play the lottery. In general, a typical lottery is designed in such a way that a number of numbers are randomly selected from a certain range (from 1 to 25, from 1 to 50, and so on). If the numbers marked by the player match those drawn in any order, then the player wins the main prize.



Article about Stephen Mandela

However, Mandel noted that in certain lotteries the jackpot could be more than three times the total cost of redeeming all combinations. For example, if in a lottery you need to choose six numbers from 1 to 40, then the number of possible combinations of numbers will be 3,838,380. And if the jackpot in the same lottery is $10 million, then Mandel could well have purchased one ticket for each combination, paying no more than a dollar per ticket. Such a move not only guaranteed him a win, but also a substantial profit even after deducting all taxes.



Stefan Mandel

Everything ingenious is simple, and Stefan Mandel also found the “lottery game” great fun, because, let me remind you, he loved numbers very much and believed that anyone who had mastered mathematics at the high school level could calculate winning combinations and hit the jackpot. Mandel continued to improve his method and even convinced investors to create a collective capital, the so-called “lottery syndicate”.



Stefan Mandel

And after that, he developed a special computerized system that automatically executed the algorithm that filled out the tickets. Previously, all this had to be done manually, and a single mistake could bury many months of work. The “lottery syndicate” and the automation of “production” allowed Mandel to win 12 lotteries (and collect $400,000 in small prizes) in Australia alone. And in 1986, he also received the coveted winnings of 1.1 million dollars!



Stefan Mandel and automatic filling of lottery tickets

But appetite, as we know, comes with eating, and Mandel began looking for lotteries with an even bigger jackpot. And this was the Virginia lottery, the peculiarity of which was that players were allowed to purchase tickets in unlimited quantities and print them at home. I will omit all the nuances of preparing for the drawing, there are too many nuances: organizing a fictitious company to raise capital for the purchase of tickets, installing additional computers and printers for printing tickets, and hiring employees...



Virginia lottery ticket

In general, the result of the work done was the largest win in the history of the Virginia lottery - $27,036,142! Mandel hit the jackpot, and did it absolutely legally, relying mainly on his own knowledge, but it seemed to the lottery service employees that he simply “deceived” the system. Stefan Mandel came under investigation, which involved 14 intelligence agencies of different countries, including the CIA, FBI, US Tax Service, Australian Crime Commission and Australian Securities Commission. However, he came out unscathed and even gained fame as a folk hero in Australia.



Newspaper headlines about how "one man" managed to win $27 million.

Currently, Stefan Mandel lives on a tropical island in Vanuatu, one of the states of Oceania. He is already 90 years old, and he lives a quiet and inconspicuous life, far from fame and lotteries.



Stefan Mandel