How Aussie maths whiz won the lotto 14 times
Winning the lotto is more than likely a once-in-a-lifetime chance, but Aussie man Stefan Mandel defied the odds when he won the golden ticket 14 times using basic maths.
The Romanian-Australian mathematician, joined by a small team of investors, discovered a remarkably easy way to hack the system in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mandel’s first two wins were secured in his home country of Romania, where he was saving up to escape the then-Soviet Union before he won another dozen times in Australia.
Surprisingly, Mandel’s system was not only straightforward but relied on very little of his mathematical training.
The odds of winning the jackpot in the Australian Powerball are about one in 76,767,600, according to lotto land. If you want to double your chances with two tickets, the odds are still a mere 2 in 76,767,600.
Mandel observed that in certain lotteries, the jackpot prize was much higher than the cost of purchasing every possible combination of numbers. Given he buys every ticket, he was almost guaranteed a return on his investment – so long as the winnings were split between several golden ticket holders.
So, Mandel did just that.
While it’s not completely against the rules, snatching up every ticket doesn’t quite resonate with the spirit of the game, and his winnings were astronomical.
Mandel, now 89, convinced a group of investors to buy into the scheme over several years.
He created algorithms that were able to generate and print the millions of different ticket groups required, which some lotteries allowed people to do at the time.
With his pile of tickets printed and ready to go, Mandel and his team waited for a hefty jackpot, where they would purchase those tickets in shops.
Mandel secured 12 wins on smaller lotteries Down Under before he sought out jackpots in the US with a sum far larger than anything he had won so far.
While he won millions of dollars with his scheme, aiming for massive lotteries in the US proved to be his downfall.
Mandel specifically had his sights set on the Virginia lottery, which was new at the time and only used numbers 1-44 in its draws. That meant there were 7,059,052 possible combinations, much less than the 25 million or higher that his team was used to.
When the jackpot was high enough, around US$15.5 million, Mandel ordered thousands of investors to buy out the tickets in bulk.
To Mandel’s dismay, some investors pulled out. After two days of purchases, the group secured about 6.4 million of the possible 7 million combinations needed to guarantee them the jackpot. Fortunately, the odds remained in his favour as he won the Virginia Lottery too.
The FBI and CIA launched an investigation into Mandel, but no wrongdoing was found. Virginia Lottery had no choice but to pay up.
Mandel won millions of dollars in the Virginia Lottery, including bringing home most of the smaller prizes.
He later disbanded his team and retired to a beach house in Vanuatu, where he still lives.
While Mandel’s scheme was legal at the time, it resulted in new rules for the lottery. Many countries, including the US and Australia, have since passed laws that stopped punters from buying lottery tickets in bulk or printing them at home, in turn rendering his methods impossible.
Image credit: Twitter / Youtube