The odds of winning the lottery today they are very rare. A much-cited statistic is that “you are more likely to be struck by lightning and die than pick the lucky ticket”. However, an economist has found the trick and has already managed to win up to 14 times in lotteries around the world.
It is about a Romanian economist named Stefan Mandel, that with the help of investors and a syndicate – called the International Lottery Fund or ILF – managed to win a total of 14 lotteries around the world.
Now, in an interview available on YouTube, Mandel explained: “In theory, anyone can buy all possible combinations. Any high school boy or girl can calculate those combinations. No one has ever developed a logistical system to present such a number of game ballots. We were the only winners and that was it.”
In the end, Mandel noticed a lottery in Virginia, where the rules for picking six numbers between 1 and 44 meant they only had a 1 in 7,059,052 chance. – apparently, this was a good thing.
Something that also seemed positive to them is that Virginia allowed individuals to buy tickets and print them at home, which made the process less cumbersome and uncomfortable, since they only needed 30 computers.
It was in February 1992 that their syndicate clinched a $27 million jackpot, and since they had done every ticket imaginable, they took an additional $900,000 in prize money for tickets that placed second, third, fourth and so on.
14 international agencies investigated him and the ILF – including the CIA and FBI – but both the man and the organization were cleared of any wrongdoing.
Now according to The HustleMandel spends his days in a beach house on a remote island off the Australian coast.