This man won the lottery 14 times with a simple mathematical formula

If winning the lottery is a real stroke of luck, it's practically impossible to win several times. Yet, there was a time when a man was able to take home prize money 14 times. His name is Stefan Mandel and this is his story.

We are in 1960s and 70s Romania, governed by Nicolae Ceauşescu (photo). Stefan Mandel was an accountant with a modest monthly salary of 360 Lei (around 74 euros / 79 dollars). It was just enough - as he recalls in the podcast Planet Money - "for a good pair of shoes".

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Tired of his economic hardship, Stefan Mandel developed a mathematical system that he called "combinatorial condensation" to try and win the lottery. As he declared to the Romanian newspaper Bursa, the system was his way to escape poverty.

Image: Stefan Mandel / CBS

Inspired by the Fibonacci series, the Mandel system allows you to identify in a non-random but calculated manner which combinations of numbers you should play in lotteries where the first 6 correct numbers will get you a prize.

As a mathematics enthusiast, Mandel was aware that the probability of guessing 6 numbers is very low. However, it increases considerably if you only need to guess 5 numbers. Hence, his fundamental intuition: do not aim for the jackpot of the 6 winning numbers, but concentrate on the 'minor' prizes.

The second intuition on which Mandel's system is based, is quite obvious: playing a high number of lottery tickets from different bookmakers will contribute to guaranteeing the "certainty of victory".

As he told the paper Bursa, Mandel focused on "minor" lotteries whose prize money is 3 times higher than the number of possible combinations or the expense of purchasing all the necessary tickets.

In short, Mandel's system involves buying a ticket for every possible combination. If we talk about a 40-number lottery, typical in many countries, the number of possible winning combinations is around 3.8 million.

If the prize pool of the lottery in question is 10 million and each ticket costs 1 euro, it is necessary to invest 3.8 million to guarantee victory. This huge initial investment would guarantee a high profit (6.2 million).

As reconstructed by the Australian site The Hustle, Mandel turned to some friends for his first attempt to win the lottery. Even though they did not have all the money necessary to buy the required number of tickets, the 'investors' were lucky and managed to win the first prize of 72,783 lei (approximately €14,600 today).

The sum is far from today's lottery prizes, but, as reported by The Hustle, it was more or less the equivalent of 18 years' salary in Romania. The prize enabled Mandel to leave his difficult life in Romania and move to Australia.

In the photo: people in line for food in a glimpse of Bucharest in the 1980s.

If in Romania he was unable to find 'investors' capable of guaranteeing him all the necessary capital, in Australia he found a group interested in his project and created a real company, Pacific Financial Resources.

Its system allowed the company to win prizes in 12 lotteries between Australia and the United Kingdom. However, problems arose when he set his sights on a lottery in the US.

Mandel decided to play the Virginia State Lottery, with $1 tickets. By February 1992, it had reached a jackpot of approximately $27 million.

Mandel calculated that the necessary combinations would cost around 7 million altogether. Through an ad hoc fund called International Lotto Fund (ILF), he managed to buy almost all of them. As such, Mandel won the 1st prize as well as other 'consolation' prizes.

According to reports in the New York Times, the fund led by Mandel received the 27 million jackpot plus 6 second prizes, 132 third prizes and 135,000 other, smaller prizes: an enormous amount of money.

Image: Stefan Mandel / CBS

The news of such a sensational win by a single group of Australian investors reached the pages of newspapers such as the Washington Post. It directly aroused the suspicion of both the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the FIA (Financial Intelligence Authority).

What Mandel did, was not illegal at the time. Yet, he was taken to court in an attempt to punish him for his massive purchase of lottery tickets.

In the end, no court could convict Mandel of a crime. He did lose a lot of money in legal expenses though, as the New York Post reports.

With the largest portion of the winnings (and angering some of the other investors), Mandel left the United States behind. As reported by The Independent, he moved to Vanuatu, the paradisaical Pacific island you see in the photo.

Today, winning a jackpot is no longer as 'simple' as it was in the past for Mandel. His system has contributed to shaking up the world of lotteries and changing its rules to prevent people from playing on a grand scale. Now, all we poor mortals have to do is trust in fate if we want to win the lottery...

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