Man who won lottery 14 times explains simple math he used to beat the system
Stefan Mandel has won the lottery a whopping 14 times
A man who has won the lottery a staggering 14 times has explained the somewhat simple math he used to beat the system.
Your chances of winning the lottery are actually pretty slim - well, one in $302.5 million for the Mega Millions jackpot, to be precise.
As a result, it is highly unlikely any of us will win a massive fortune in our lifetime.
However, Stefan Mandel has managed to claim the jackpot a whopping 14 times, which is actually incredible considering playing the lottery is a game of luck.
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Well, Mandel doesn't see it that way after 'simple math' to 'hack' the lottery system - though it did take years of work.
The theory, which reportedly took a long time to craft, saw Mandel force a lottery syndicate where people pooled their money together to buy lottery tickets to increase their chances of winning.
All in all, the group went on to win $19,000, which left Mandel with just short of $4,000. The cash was enough for him to relocate from Romania to Australia with his family.
Mandel's syndicate, called the International Lotto Fund (ILF), then went on to win the lottery a staggering 14 times.
They didn't always win the jackpot, but the group still won substantial amounts of cash over the years with their system in countries like the US, Australia, and Romania.
While Mandel's schemes weren't technically illegal, they definitely caused a lot of suspicion with authorities and various international agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, who investigated him and the ILF for wrongdoing.
However, both Mandel and the ILF were ultimately cleared.
Mandel entered a years-long legal battle and, while he was acquitted of all the crimes he was accused of, the whole ordeal caused him a bunch of financial trouble.
The big winner ended up declaring bankruptcy in 1995, just three years after winning a $27 million jackpot prize, and he went on to spend the next decade running various alleged investment schemes.
His number-picking algorithm, which he called 'combinatorial condensation', rested on the premise of buying enough lottery tickets to play every possible combination, leading the US to establish laws banning it altogether.
The lottery rules were changed to ban punters from buying bulk tickets, as well as using computer-generated tickets, to ensure no one else could replicate Mandel's methods.
So, if you were planning on testing your luck, it's not going to work, unfortunately.
Callum Jones