How to win the lottery 14 times (legally)

They say that you are up to four times more likely to be struck by lightning than to win the lottery. Apparently, this was never the case for Stefan Mandel, the economist who managed to win up to 14 times with the lottery prize. It was his story (and his formula).

His story began in the 1960s and continued until the 1990s. Mandel grew up during the Romanian Communist era, when a large part of the population was living in poverty under Soviet control. That is why it is quite possible that the fruit of its success is imposed: there were not many ways to earn a living honestly, at least without leaving the legal framework.

In this scenario, Mandel struggled to support his wife and two children with a salary of at least $ 90 a month. On the verge of throwing away the sponge, he found what looked like an emergency exit: a algorithm that would guarantee you a lottery prize.

While working as an economist for the Romanian mining consortium, he had the idea to overcome the difficulties of the lottery. Mandel wanted to find a sure way to win. So he spent several sleepless nights until he discovered a perfect mathematical formula for predicting 5 winning numbers out of 6. The lottery was, as Mandel saw it, "my ticket to leave the country"

The economist said that "well-applied mathematics can guarantee a fortune"Mandel's debut was simple: he realized that the key to finding a way to win the lottery was to identify cumulative prizes that had become three times larger than the total potential number of winning combinations.

Therefore, for a lottery that requires participants to choose six numbers from 1 to 40, for example, it is possible that the winning combination is 3,838,380. In this scenario, Mandel would wait until the jackpot is multiplied by three.

The reasoning was simple: if the tickets cost $ 1 each (at the time and in the lotteries Mandel was heading for), he could then buy a ticket for each combination and deliver the one who would win the biggest jackpot to win. twice more. the amount of money that he spent for the tickets.

Of course, following this method, he did not earn double the money because Mandel had to cover overhead costs, which required that the jackpot be three times larger than the total number of possible winning combinations for that purpose. he can make a profit.

Precisely, it was overhead and logistics that made Mandel's project complex, even though the underlying mathematical idea was seemingly simple.

After identifying a lottery with the correct winning combinations for most of the jackpot, the economist brought together a group of investors to make a relatively small contribution (a few thousand dollars each).

With the money of the investors, Mandel would print millions of tickets with each combination (which could be done next), then bring them to authorized lottery distributors to buy them and enter them.

Then, once the combination is obtained, the profits will be distributed between Mandel and the investors.

The man first tested his plan in Romania with a group of friends. The free time that he spent studying theoretical mathematics paid off and brought him about $ 19,000, which is enough to bribe government officials and allow him to leave the country and start a new one. life in the West.

From there, he made the leap: the United States and Australia in the 70s and 80s.

Of course, the plot, larger than ever, had disadvantages. Originally, Mandel had to write all the combinations by hand, which greatly increased the risk of human error. The Romanian jackpot had also been relatively modest: after paying all its investors, only He pocketed about $ 4,000 for him.

As a result, Mandel's margins were generally not very large. For example, after a victory in 1987, worth just over a million, he paid investors and taxes and now has only $ 97,000.

In any case, when he arrived in Australia, where he settled, he was able to perfect his system. The development of computer equipment in the 1980s greatly simplified the process of the economist. Instead of stuffing the bills in his hand, he could just let the machines do the work.

Mandel was able to bring together a solid group of investors while he was constantly listening to prices up to the requirements. In the 1980s, the Australian-based "lottery syndicate" reached 12 jackpots and earned more than $ 400,000 in other winnings before attracting the attention of the authorities. , which subsequently changed the laws of the lottery to avoid future manipulations of the system.

However, the biggest tip of the economist was yet to come. Supported by this international network of conspirators He had formed and in February 1992, he decided to apply his system to the state lottery of Virginia (United States), which had reached a jackpot of more than 27 million.

The man he had on the ground, A. Alex, oversaw the processing of 7 million tickets from more than 100 supermarkets and gas stations in Virginia. Although store employees were reluctant to process the total amount they were required to process, technically there was nothing illegal in the purchase of thousands of individual tickets, so the plan was implemented.

Stefan Mandel's system worked perfectly and on February 16, 1992, he won the jackpot.

This large sum attracted the interest of government officials. After multiple investigations, the CIA and the FBI declared Mandel innocent of any crime. In the end, everything was reduced to a little luck, some mathematics and a lot of fieldwork. As Mandel himself said: "any high school math student could calculate the combinations"

With that, he himself has collected more than $ 15 million (with more than $ 5 million in expenses). During this time, he got in trouble after not paying the investors and filing for bankruptcy. In addition, he was also involved in several investment related scams that led him to jail for 20 months.

In total, Stefan Mandel built his own system to perfection and made a fortune.

By the way, today's aspiring mimics have a very difficult life. After Mandel's adventures, the American lottery authorities changed the rules, making their system impossible to reproduce. No one can print their own tickets at home and the number of tickets purchased per person is also limited.

As for Mandel, he now lives "retired" on a small tropical island off the coast of Australia. I leave you the six stages of the "Mendel formula":

1 Calculate the total number of possible combinations. (For a lottery that requires you to choose six numbers from 1 to 40, that means 3,838,380 combinations).

2 Find lotteries where the jackpot is three times the number of possible combinations.

3 Collect enough money to pay for each combination. (Mandel brought together 2,524 investors to win the Virginia Lotto).

4 Print millions of entries with each combination. (This was legal, now you should buy the tickets directly at the store).

5 Deliver tickets to authorized lottery distributors.

6 Earn money, but do not forget to pay your investors.

[LotteryCritic, The Independent]