In the 1990s, Romanian-Australian economist Stefan Mandel and his associates played the lottery and won multiple times.
Most people consider winning the lottery to be a stroke of luck, but for Stefan Mandel, a Romanian-born Australian economist, winning was not luck—it was the result of a mathematical formula and a bold strategy. In the 1990s, he and his small team of associates continuously scored big wins in lotteries, totaling 14 victories. How did he achieve this? The secret lay in exploiting a mathematical loophole and organized planning.
By the late 1960s, young economist Stefan Mandel struggled to make ends meet. At that time, his salary was only about $10 a month, insufficient to cover basic needs. He needed a way to earn money quickly and decided to buy lottery tickets. With an innate affinity for numbers, Mandel spent every spare moment analyzing articles on probability theory by the 13th-century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci. After years of research, he developed an “algorithm for number selection” based on a method known as “combinatorial condensation.”
Statistically, the chance of being struck by lightning is four times higher than winning the jackpot. Yet, one person has won the jackpot 14 times (without ever being struck by lightning), and this is his “secret sauce.”
According to his findings, if a player chooses 6 numbers from a set of 1 to 49, the odds of winning are 1 in 13,983,816. However, if that individual selects 15 numbers, the chances of winning rise to 1 in 2,794. With his algorithm, Mandel was confident that he could at least win the second prize along with hundreds of smaller prizes, and the odds of winning the jackpot were 1 in 10. He collaborated with four friends, each purchasing 228 lottery tickets. He was fortunate enough to win a jackpot worth approximately $2,000 at the time. After deducting expenses, he had enough money to take his family abroad. After four years of wandering around Europe, Mandel settled in Australia and began playing the lottery differently.
14 times winning the jackpot allowed Mandel to live comfortably on a tropical island.
Many lottery winners have squandered their winnings by buying lavish homes, expensive sports cars, gambling, or getting entangled in lawsuits. Robert Pagliarini, a financial planning expert, shares that to ensure they don’t end up broke again, lottery winners should hire a “financial support trio” to help them plan their future expenditures.
“This trio consists of a lawyer, a tax expert, and a financial advisor,” Pagliarini states. “Their job is to help you make smart financial decisions and plan for the future. They can also protect you from the media and demands for prize sharing from others.”
According to Pagliarini, the most important thing you need to do to avoid being swept away by the lottery windfall is to stay calm and focus on a long-term plan with practical financial strategies.
For Mandel, after winning the jackpot 14 times, he set his sights on winning the Virginia Lottery jackpot, where the odds of winning were very low, but the rewards were substantial. However, when applying his strategy to the Virginia Lottery system, Mandel was caught and sentenced to 20 months in prison in Israel. After that incident, Mandel decided to retire and enjoy a comfortable life in Vanuatu, a tropical island nation in the South Pacific known for its volcanoes and majestic waterfalls.
In his previous 14 wins, Mandel’s strategies were legal, but new laws in the United States and Australia have placed these practices on the list of prohibitions. Currently, the two main components of Mandel’s formula—buying tickets in large quantities and printing tickets at home—are now illegal.
Currently, the two main components of Mandel’s formula have been banned.
Here are 6 steps in the formula that Mandel used to earn significant money from the lottery:
- Calculate the total number of possible combinations. (For example, with a lottery requiring you to choose 6 numbers from 1 to 40, there are 3,838,380 combinations).
- Find a lottery where the jackpot is more than three times or more than the total amount spent to purchase all combinations.
- Raise enough funds to buy all combinations. (Mandel combined forces with 2,524 investors to “attack” the Virginia lottery).
- Print millions of tickets for each combination. (This was once considered legal, but now you can only buy tickets at authorized retailers).
- Provide tickets to authorized lottery agents.
- Win the prize and don’t forget to share the money with the investors. (When he won a $1.3 million jackpot in 1987, Mandel paid out nearly all to the investors and kept only $97,000 for himself).
Stefan Mandel’s strategy is a testament to how a small loophole can be exploited to yield extraordinary results. However, his success was not solely reliant on mathematics but also on organization, boldness, and the ability to manage a massive workload. Today, lottery regulations have tightened, making Mandel’s strategy nearly impossible to replicate. Yet, his story remains a prime example of how creative thinking can turn the unimaginable into reality.
In Vietnam, Mandel’s method does not yield profit when applied to the traditional lottery system, as the total amount spent on tickets is double the total value of all prizes collected.
When applied to the Vietlott 6/45 lottery, even with raising 81 billion VND to buy all tickets, you still cannot obtain all the tickets as they must be purchased directly from the retail system. The method of self-printing tickets, like Mandel, is not considered legal in Vietnam, as well as in most other countries.
In other words, currently, Mandel’s method cannot be applied in most countries, not just in Vietnam, the United States, and Australia.
