OUTTA LUCK
How maths genius ‘hacked’ lottery with perfect number formula to win 14 TIMES – before he ended up bankrupt
Watch the video to find out how the lotto whizz's elaborate - and legal - scheme got him the jackpot at an overseas lottery
A SAVVY brain and a perfect number formula was all it took for a maths whizz to win the lottery 14 TIMES - until his luck ran out.
Desperate for cash, Romanian economist Stefan Mandel, now 84, found an ingenious way to "hack" the system and bag himself thousands.
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Born in 1940, Mandel's exploits and his systematic approach to winning lotteries made him a legendary figure in the history of lottery gaming.
After years of planning and mathematical research, he came up with a price optimisation technique which drew on a method he called “combinatorial condensation”.
For instance, let's say he took a system 15 (crossing 15 numbers in one square, which gives you 5,005 unique combinations and costs $5,005) and reduced it to 669 combinations, costing $669.
If the six winning numbers were among his 15 numbers, he would be sure to win the 2nd prize, with a 1 in 9 chances of winning the 1st prize.
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Mandel discovered that since a lottery draw could only have a certain number of possibilities, purchasing a ticket for each potential outcome might be less expensive than the jackpot prize.
For example, if a game required the selection of six numbers between 1 and 40, there would be 3,838,380 possible number combinations.
But if the prize pool was £10 million and each ticket cost £1, he would have made a tidy profit.
Because he didn't have millions of dollars to spend on millions of tickets, Stefan organised a syndicate with four other players to combine their money.
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Like that, the group could then buy a larger number of tickets to increase their odds at winning, and later split their fortune.
His first win in the 1960s landed Stefan and the syndicate the top lotto prize at the time, worth over £15,000.
LOTTO WINNERS WHO LOST IT ALL
After paying his fellow team mates he was left with just £3,000 - but it was enough to bribe officials and escape Romania’s Communist system.
The "lotto hacker" then moved to Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and daughter.
Stefan grew his operation greatly from Down Under, winning several lotteries, including draws all the way in the United States.
He won once in Romania, 12 times in Australia and once in the US.
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LOTTO WAREHOUSE
He also won hundreds of thousands of smaller prizes across Australia.
The maths whizz set up a warehouse where his 16 employees printed a total of 7 million tickets over three months.
In the US, Stefan used scouts and accumulated data on previous lotteries with jackpots greater than the total cost of purchasing all possible combinations in the lottery, which would include all winning tickets.
The group went on to target six state lotteries, prioritising them by the desired jackpot.
Mandel also set up an official company called Pacific Financial Resources, and under it also developed a trust called the International Lotto Fund.
The savvy economist even managed to persuade thousands of investors to boost their funding pool.
The mathematician outsmarted everyone and was one step ahead of the game by using completely legal tactics.
NO MORE MONEY
At first, it all seemed to have gone well to the lotto genius, who told Romanian newspaper Bursa in 2012: "I’m a man who takes risks, but in a calculated way.
“Trimming my beard is a lottery: There is always the possibility that I’ll cut myself, get an infection in my blood, and die, but I do it anyway.
"The chances are in my favour.”
But by the 1990s, lottery organisations had caught on and banned the use of bulk purchasing and computer-generated tickets.
While Mandel’s method was not illegal, it still raised suspicions and later saw himself dragged into a two week investigation.
The lotto whizz was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing — but while he managed to pocket millions from the win, his investors were left with much smaller payouts that promised.
Mandel later lost everything in 1995 after his insurance company went bankrupt.
The 84-year-old now lives on the tropical island of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, where many of his disbanded syndicate retired to.
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After his numerous lottery successes, Mandel now leads a quiet life away from the public eye.
His move was partly motivated by a desire for a peaceful lifestyle and to avoid the scrutiny and legal complexities he faced in various countries due to his lottery strategies.
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