He won the lottery 14 times thanks to mathematics: his millionaire prize was pure luck

The lottery It is presented as a game of chance, where people take the risk of betting their money to win large amounts. However, that was not enough to Stefan Mandela numbers-savvy economist who came up with an ingenious strategy to win the prize.

The man, who had crossed Romania’s oppressive regime during the 1960sdecided that the best way to escape from there was with a lot of money. But Mandel was not a distant shot, but a fact: he was going to win the lottery.

The story of Stefan Mandel, the man who won the lottery 14 times

Mandel calculated that if you bought tickets with certain blocks of numberscould guarantee a victory in second place. So he called and convinced two friends of his to help him with his plan. His first test with his “investors” went better than expected. They didn’t come out seconds, but they took the first place prize.

“We won 72,783 leu -Romanian currency- ($17,184.43), which was equivalent to about 18 years of salary,” Mandel, who used his earnings to escape from Romania with his wife and childrenand finally settled in Australiawhere he perfected his mathematical plan. Through in-depth research with a computer program created by himself, Mandel found the logic behind combining numbers to win again.

He found more investors, to whom he promised a portion of his profits, and calculated the amount he needed to buy all the tickets. The plan was once again successful, so the economist replicated it on several occasions. He won 12 times throughout the 1980sand eventually Australia made many changes to the laws of the game.

But he didn’t keep what he earned and went for more, in this case, Virginia lottery. The choice was because there were fewer number combinations there than in other places. Only it would cost $7.1 million to buy each and every ticketso Mandel did it again. The Virginia lottery had increased to $27 million, giving Mandel three days to buy all number combinations from Australia.

Powered on 30 computers and 12 laser printersused about 30 tons of paper and sent $60,000 for Anithalee Alex Jr., one of his employees, to distribute to dozens of counters to go to gas stations and grocery stores in the Norfolk region to make wholesale purchases with cashier’s checks.

However, on the last of the three days the problem came: one of the stores stopped selling them, and they had only paid between five and six million tickets. What was a mathematical strategy was reduced to pure and exclusive luck. To everyone’s surprise, this time he accompanied them, and Mandel’s squad took first prize and another million for smaller prizes.

Attempts to stop payment by the Australian Securities Commission, the FBI and the Virginia Lottery were futilesince everything was legal. For their part, Mandel’s 2,500 investors did not profit from the victory, but rather lost. The group earned a return of approximately $1,400 on its $4,000 investment..

Mandel, for his part, a consultant fee of $1.7 million was paid. Then, in 1993, he tried to open his own lottery in Gibraltaralthough without success, for which he spent time in Israeli jail for fraud. In any case, in one of the last interviews they did with him in 2016he lived in a beach house in the South Pacific.