Lottery Master Reveals His Secrets
A maths whizz won the lottery 14 times, which is definitely impossible by chance. He explains how and why he decided to crack the lottery code.
In the 1960s, Romanian economist Stefan Mandel was struggling, so he came up with an unlikely solution — winning the lotto.
After years of painstaking research, he devised a “number-picking algorithm” which drew on a method he called “combinatorial condensation” – stay with us.
Stefan realized that in some draws, the total cost of buying a ticket to play every possible combination was much lower than the grand jackpot prize.
For example:
- Six numbers ranging between 1 and 40 are chosen.
- There would be 3,838,380 possible number combinations.
If the jackpot was £10 million, and tickets cost £1 each, he stood to win a massive profit.
He had 16 full-time employees and used 30 computers to process every single combination.
Along with a group of friends, he bought huge amounts of tickets using all the possible combinations and ended up taking out the top prize — worth over £15,000 (7,700 Leu).
After paying expenses, he was left with just £3,000, but it was enough to bribe officials and escape Romania’s Communist system. His family moved to Australia to start a new life.
He eventually won the lottery 14 times without breaking a single law.
“I’m a man who takes risks, but in a calculated way”
Stefan persuaded a pool of investors to put their cash together to build a lotto syndicate.
He also invented an automation system, with printers and computers using the algorithm to fill out tickets automatically using every combination of numbers.
The group won 12 lotteries and won hundreds of thousands of smaller prizes across Australia and the UK.
Lotto authorities cottoned onto the plot and changed rules to ban computer-printed forms and bulk buying tickets.
With the profits he’d already made, he planted scouts across the US. Also, he developed a list of previous lotteries with jackpots that were at least three times higher than the total of all possible combinations.
He set his sights on the Virginia Lottery, as its numbers only ranged between one and 44, which meant the total number of possible combinations was millions lower than in other games.
He set up an official company, Pacific Financial Resources. Under it also developed a trust called the International Lotto Fund.
From a warehouse in Melbourne, he employed 16 full-time staff. They printed out seven million tickets over three months, which he then mailed to an associate in the US.
The syndicate won the jackpot and a host of smaller prizes.
His actions, although not illegal, still raised suspicions. There was a four-year legal battle.
Officials cleared his record of wrongdoing. While he managed to pocket millions from the win, his investors were left with much smaller payouts than promised.
Mr Mandel filed for bankruptcy in 1995. At one point spent 20 months behind bars in Israel thanks to an investment scam.
