The Man Who Won The Lottery 14 Times Zachary Crockett 15 2023

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Issue #263
Sunday, July 23, 2023
The man who won the

lottery 14 times
How a rogue Romanian economist legally
gamed the lottery and won millions of
dollars around the world.
BY ZACHARY CROCKETT
On Wednesday night, a Californian won the

$1.08B Powerball lottery, one of the largest prizes
in history. But it’s not the most improbable victory.
We’re republishing this story from August 2018
about an economist who perfected the lottery:
Just after 11 PM on February 15, 1992, a janky

ball machine at the Virginia State Lottery HQ spit
out 6 winning numbers on live television: 8… 11…
13… 15… 19… 20.
In the coming days, officials would find out that

one “person” had secured not only the
$27,036,142 jackpot, but 6 second prizes, 132
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third prizes, and 135k minor prizes collectively

worth another $900k.
What unfolded next was the strangest, most

improbable lottery tale in history — one involving
thousands of international investors, dozens of
complex computer systems, and a mathematical
savant who’d masterminded the entire operation
from the other side of the world.
This is the story of the man who “gamed” the
lottery by buying every possible combination.
In the late 1960s, a young Romanian economist

named Stefan Mandel was struggling to get by.
At the time, Romania was under oppressive

Communist rule, a period marred by poverty, job
and food shortages, and “profound misery.”
Mandel’s salary of 360 lei (US $10) a month was
not enough to make ends meet, and, as he
later told Planet Money, he needed a way to “get
some serious money, quickly.”
Many Romanians in Mandel’s predicament had,

out of necessity, turned to lives of crime. But
Mandel, a self-described “philosopher-
mathematician,” saw another way out: The lottery.
Top: Stefan Mandel spent more than a decade reading mathematical

theories before winning his first lottery in the 1960s; Bottom: Mandel’s
lottery feats made headlines in his hometown Romanian newspaper
(Via Busra; Illustrations: The Hustle)
Let’s take a step back here: What kind of idiot

banks on winning the lottery? You’re literally more
likely to win an Olympic gold medal, have
identical quintuplets, or get crushed by a vending
machine.
Well, Mandel wasn’t just any guy — he was a

natural with numbers who spent every spare
minute analyzing theoretical probability papers
written by the 13th-century mathematician
Leonardo Fibonacci. And, after years of research,
he wrote a “number-picking algorithm” based on a
method he dubbed “combinatorial condensation.”
“I’m a weekend mathematician, an accountant

without too much education,” he later told
a Romanian magazine. “But mathematics
properly applied can guarantee a fortune.”
Here’s how it worked.
If a player picked 6 numbers in a 49-ball lottery,

his odds of winning were 1 in 13,983,816. If he
selected 15 numbers (which required purchasing

5,005 games — one for each possible
combination), his odds of winning increased to 1
in 2,794. Mandel claimed that his algorithm could
reduce these 5,005 combinations to just 569.
If the 6 winning numbers fell among his 15 picks,

he’d be guaranteed to win at least a 2nd prize
and hundreds of smaller prizes — and he’d have
a 1 in 10 chance of winning the grand prize.
Mandel banded together with 4 friends, each of

whom bought 228 tickets per draw.
Miraculously (and with a lot of luck), he won the

first prize of 72,783 lei (about US $2k, or $16.8k
adjusted for inflation). After expenses, he walked
away with enough to bribe foreign ministry
officials and flee Romania for a new life — and a
bigger jackpot.
Turning lottery wins into a business

After 4 years of roaming around Europe, Mandel
settled in Australia and he set out to game the
lottery in a different way.
In the typical lottery, a set of numbers within a

certain range (say, 1-50) are randomly selected; if
yours match in any order, you win the jackpot.
The chances of winning are based on the number
of possible combinations of these numbers, often
in the millions.
But Mandel caught on to something: In certain

lottos, the jackpot would climb to an amount
more than 3x the cost of buying every
combination.
For example, let’s say a lottery required 6 picks of

numbers between 1 and 40. This would yield
3,838,380 possible number combinations
(calculator here). Now, let’s say that same lottery
had a $10m jackpot. In theory, Mandel could buy
a ticket for every single combination at $1 each
and be guaranteed a win — and, after taxes, a
decent profit.
Mandel maintained that “any high school math

student could calculate the combinations.” But
this method came with some major logistical
setbacks. How would he get the capital? And how
could he possibly fill out hundreds of thousands of
tickets, number by number?
Mandel’s system was simple — but incredibly complex from a

logistical standpoint (The Hustle)
Over a period of years, Mandel convinced

hundreds of investors to pool their money
together and create a “lotto syndicate.” He then
developed a full-fledged automation system: A
room full of printers and computers running on an
algorithm that pre-populated tickets with every
combination.
Computers revolutionized Mandel’s process.

Before, he’d been limited to writing out millions of
combinations by hand, where a single mistake
could ruin 8 months’ worth of work; now, he could
outsource the work to a machine.
Throughout the 1980s, Mandel’s syndicate would

wait until a jackpot was 3x bigger than the cost of
covering all possible combinations, then “move to
buy” thousands of tickets. They managed to win
12 lotteries (and rake in 400k smaller prizes)
across Australia, including a $1.1m haul in 1986.
“Everyone said to me: You can not, you will not

succeed! ” Mandel told a Romanian newspaper at
the time. “Now, the voices that have long [cast me
as] a dreamer have been silenced.”
But Mandel’s system soon attracted negative

attention.
His repeated wins prompted Australian lottery

authorities to change the law, disallowing a single
person from covering every possible combination.
So, he set his sights on much bigger feat — one

that would make international headlines and
boggle the minds of lottery officials around the
world.
Virginia or bust
Mandel began by identifying lotteries where the
jackpot had risen to at least 3x the cost of buying
all possible combinations.
Ultimately, he printed out tickets for 6 US
lotteries, including Massachusetts ($37m jackpot
to 9m combinations), Arizona ($11m to 5.1m), and
Virginia.
Virginia’s lottery offered several advantages. It

was fairly new, and allowed buyers to purchase
tickets in unlimited quantities and print them at
home. But most importantly, its numbers only
ranged from 1 to 44 (other states went as high as
54). This meant that with 6 picks, there were
“only” 7,059,052 possible combinations,
compared to the usual 25m+.
Top: A 1992 headline from the New York Times; Bottom: a 1992
Virginia lottery ticket (via NYT Archives)
Mandel set up an agency with a major insurance

company. Under the shell corporation Pacific
Financial Resources, he established a trust called
the International Lotto Fund (ILF) and convinced
2,560 people to buy a 10-year whole life
insurance policy, with a $4k annual premium.
Mandel then used this money, legally, to buy each
person a stake in the lottery.
In a Melbourne warehouse, he set up 30

computers and 12 laser printers, and hired 16 full-
time employees to print millions of tickets pre-
populated with every combination — a process
that took 3 months. He then shipped the one-
tonne of paper weight to a point-person in the US
at a cost of $60k.
With the tickets secured in Virginia, Mandel had
to wait until the jackpot hit a number that would
make financial sense after taxes, overhead, and
paying off investors.
A state lottery prize typically begins in the low

millions and increases every time a drawing goes
by with no winner. Mandel had to anticipate when
to strike, and had to hope for the best that there
wouldn’t be multiple winners to dilute the pot and
ruin his margins.
On February 12, 1992, the Virginia Lottery jackpot
hit $15.5m. Mandel’s team on the ground was
given a simple directive: Go.
And nobody — not even Mandel — could’ve

anticipated the madness that would ensue.
As Mandel knew, the “buy all combinations”

method of winning the lottery was more of a
logistical than a financial challenge. The hard part
was yet to come.
Tickets could be legally printed at home, but they

still had to be taken to an authorized lotto retailer
in the US, paid for (at $1 each), and processed.
Waltzing into a gas station with 1.4m tickets and a
truckload of cash wasn’t an option.
Mandel hired the accounting firm Lowe

Lippmann to transfer $9m in investor funds to
Crestar Bank in Boston, where it was cut into
$10k cashier’s checks. He then lined up advance
deals with Virginia-based retail chains to buy the
tickets in bulk. All he needed was a point-person
on the ground to orchestrate the mayhem.
For this task, Mandel turned to an esteemed

associate by the name of Anithalee Alex.
Anithalee Alex, an ex-paratrooper and failed oil man, was Mandel’s

unlikely man on the ground in Virginia (Illustration by The Hustle;
image via ‘How’d They Do That?’, 1992)
Perennially outfitted in a gold rolex and a safari

suit, Alex was a sweet talker who could “make the
world seem like a bed of roses.” An ex-
paratrooper turned Rolls Royce salesman turned
oil prospector, he could often be seen gallivanting

around his small town of Teutopolis, Illinois, in a t-
shirt that read: “Please Lord, let me prove to you
that winning the lottery won’t spoil me.”
When his old pal, Mandel, rang, Alex was fresh

out of bankruptcy court, with $400k in debt and 16
maxed-out credit cards. He was ready for action
— any action.
The job was harrowing: He was to coordinate the
drop-off, payment, and processing of 1.4m lottery
tickets at hundreds of stores all over Virginia.
The jackpot hit $15.5m on a Wednesday; the next
draw would be on Saturday. This meant that he
and his team had just 72 hours to pull it off.
A logistical nightmare
On February 12, 1992 — 3 days before the draw
— Alex checked into a Holiday Inn in Norfolk,
Virginia and set up a “command center” at the
Koger Center, a nearby business park.
In the 88-acre “maze of buildings,” Alex met with
a team of 35 couriers hired by Mandel (most of
whom were certified accountants) and distributed
cellophane-wrapped bundles of 10k tickets with
stacks of $10k cashier’s checks.
“Think of it like an office pool,” he
reportedly told the CPAs, “except a larger office
pool.”
For 2 straight days, the couriers methodically

descended on 125 gas stations and
supermarkets. At Farm Fresh, Miller Mart, and
Tinee Giant locations throughout the region,
flummoxed store clerks were asked to buy and
process 1.4m algorithmically-generated lotto
tickets.
Mandel sat back in the shadows in Australia while his team

orchestrated his Virginia plan (Via The Sydney Morning Herald, 1992)
“We thought they were nuts,” Rick Miller, a local

gas station proprietor, later admitted. “But if
someone comes up and says they want to buy
700k lottery tickets, we’re not going to chase
them away.”
A representative at Farm Fresh, who sold a

portion of tickets to Mandel’s team, had a more
spirited take: “For someone to try to do this ticket-
by-ticket is a very chancy proposition,” he said.
“But that’s what lotto’s all about.”
By Saturday evening, the team was nearing

completion. Then, disaster struck.
One of the chains who’d sold tickets in bulk got

overwhelmed and quit in the final hours, leaving
140k tickets (700k combinations) on the table.
When the deadline for entry arrived, around
1.24m of Mandel’s 1.4m tickets (6.4m of 7m
combinations) had been processed. Mandel’s
“fool proof” plan, which relied on securing every
single possibility, was in jeopardy.
Like a regular lottery, winning the jackpot would

ultimately come down to luck.
“The most incredible thing in the

world”
Mandel knew that without 100% of the
combinations secured, his strategy was reduced
to a multi-million dollar game of chance.

He was aware of other ill-fated attempts to game
a US lottery by bulk-buying tickets: In 1990, a
Sacramento retiree bought 30k tickets with a
diaper bag full of cash and walked away empty-
handed; months later, a computer engineer
known as “The Phantom” purchased 80k
combinations at a Jacksonville, Florida bar and
only won minor prizes.
Even if Mandel were to win, there was the

possibility of multiple winners — a scenario that
could significantly dilute the jackpot.
At 11:20 PM on February 15th, the numbers were

drawn on live television. In a nearby warehouse,
Alex and his team waited with baited breath.
Then, a victorious shout: They’d won.
Mandel’s victory made international headlines (via assorted US and

Australian newspapers, 1992)
“When the $27m ticket came up, everybody was

6 feet off the ground,” Alex later said. “It was the
most incredible thing in the world.” Purchased at
a Farm Fresh in Chesapeake, the ticket had been
processed in the twilight hours. Alex’s diligence
had paid off.
From his home in Australia, Mandel sent out a

short message to his 2,524 investors: “One of our
target lotteries did jackpot to our required level,”
he wrote. “We entered and won.”
The $27,036,142 jackpot (and $900k in

secondary prizes) was to be paid out in 20 annual
installments of $1.03m. But Virginia’s lottery czars
had other plans.
What would Thomas Jefferson say?

Although completely legal under both US and
Virginia state law, the Australian group’s feat was
interpreted as an effort to “cheat” the traditional
system.
“We might remember Thomas Jefferson’s view of

a lottery,” Virginia Lottery director Ken
Thorson pled to the press. “It is an opportunity for
the common man to spend a small sum for the
possibility of a higher prize… We never
anticipated a group trying to make such a large
purchase.”
Mandel was subjected to

an investigation involving 14 international
agencies, including the CIA, FBI, IRS, National
Crime Authority, and Australian Securities
Commission.
Ken Thorson, director of the Virginia Lottery, emerged as Mandel’s

arch nemesis after the big win (Illustration by The Hustle; image via
‘How’d They Do That?’, 1992)
In the end, neither Mandel nor the ILF was found

guilty of any wrongdoing. “I will live to be 150,”
he proclaimed. “I am not the type of person who
lays down and dies because some glorified clerk
doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Meanwhile, in his home country of Australia, he

became something of a folk hero: An article
in People magazine described him as a kangaroo
hopping out of the US with a pouch full of cash —
defiant, victorious, and full of life.
And what became of the

mastermind?
When the dust settled, each person who’d bought
into the lottery through Mandel’s life insurance
policy — small business owners, machine
operators, housekeepers, and doctors — made
out with around $1.4k.
Some were not pleased with this outcome.
“Stefan Mandel is not only irrelevant,”
a disgruntled investor later quipped. “He’s toxic.”
Meanwhile, Mandel paid himself a one-time

“consultant’s fee” of $1.7m, and purportedly sold
the annuity on the 20-year payout to a US
insurance company for a lump sum of $14m. After
overhead fees ($5.5m for the tickets,
and $500k in expenses), he was left with a
princely sum.
Records show that he funneled this cash into

the Pacific Basin Fund, a Hong Kong-based
account managed by his brother-in-law. “What we
calculated to be the reality has changed,” he
wrote in a 1994 letter to investors. “It may not
seem such a hot investment now.”
After that, his investor updates went cold.
An advertisement Stefan Mandel ran in Australian newspapers to find

investors for his lottery schemes (The Age, 1986-7)
Just a few years later, in 1995, Mandel declared

bankruptcy. He then spent the next decade
running various investment schemes — one of
which earned him a 10-month jail sentence in
Israel for the “alleged non-publication of a
prospectus in a cooperative society.” (Mandel’s
attorney said his conviction was later overturned,
and that Mandel never spent a single day in
prison.)
Today, Mandel spends his days at a beach house
on a remote tropical island in Vanuatu, a country
off the coast of Australia. He lives a quiet life and
reports being “retired” from the lottery.
Anithalee Alex, his one-time associate, also

dropped off the grid, and keeps a low-profile life
somewhere in Illinois. “You could not have written
a script as good as this,” he reminisced, years
later. “This is one time real life was better than
fiction.”
Though we were able to piece together the

logistics of Mandel’s 20-year lottery career, he’s
never revealed the minute details of his algorithm.
As he told an enquiring AP reporter in 1992, “That
would be like Coca-Cola revealing their recipe.”
His legacy lives on in US legislation: All 44 states

that run lotteries have enacted laws preventing
the profitable replication of Mandel’s strategy. In
effect, this secures him a title as the first and last
man to ever successfully game the lottery by
buying every possible combination.

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23/07/23, 09:05 (56 não lidos): jonastagma@yahoo.com.

br: Yahoo Mail

Sunday, July 23, 2023

The man who won the

On Wednesday night, a Californian won the

Just after 11 PM on February 15, 1992, a janky

In the coming days, officials would find out that

third prizes, and 135k minor prizes collectively

What unfolded next was the strangest, most

In the late 1960s, a young Romanian economist

At the time, Romania was under oppressive

Many Romanians in Mandel’s predicament had,

Top: Stefan Mandel spent more than a decade reading mathematical

Let’s take a step back here: What kind of idiot

Well, Mandel wasn’t just any guy — he was a

“I’m a weekend mathematician, an accountant

Here’s how it worked.

If a player picked 6 numbers in a 49-ball lottery,

selected 15 numbers (which required purchasing

If the 6 winning numbers fell among his 15 picks,

Mandel banded together with 4 friends, each of

Miraculously (and with a lot of luck), he won the

Turning lottery wins into a business

In the typical lottery, a set of numbers within a

But Mandel caught on to something: In certain

For example, let’s say a lottery required 6 picks of

Mandel maintained that “any high school math

Mandel’s system was simple — but incredibly complex from a

Over a period of years, Mandel convinced

Computers revolutionized Mandel’s process.

Throughout the 1980s, Mandel’s syndicate would

“Everyone said to me: You can not, you will not

But Mandel’s system soon attracted negative

His repeated wins prompted Australian lottery

So, he set his sights on much bigger feat — one

Virginia’s lottery offered several advantages. It

Mandel set up an agency with a major insurance

In a Melbourne warehouse, he set up 30

A state lottery prize typically begins in the low

And nobody — not even Mandel — could’ve

As Mandel knew, the “buy all combinations”

Tickets could be legally printed at home, but they

Mandel hired the accounting firm Lowe

For this task, Mandel turned to an esteemed

Anithalee Alex, an ex-paratrooper and failed oil man, was Mandel’s

Perennially outfitted in a gold rolex and a safari

oil prospector, he could often be seen gallivanting

When his old pal, Mandel, rang, Alex was fresh

For 2 straight days, the couriers methodically

Mandel sat back in the shadows in Australia while his team

“We thought they were nuts,” Rick Miller, a local

A representative at Farm Fresh, who sold a

By Saturday evening, the team was nearing

One of the chains who’d sold tickets in bulk got

Like a regular lottery, winning the jackpot would

“The most incredible thing in the

to a multi-million dollar game of chance.

Even if Mandel were to win, there was the

At 11:20 PM on February 15th, the numbers were

Then, a victorious shout: They’d won.

Mandel’s victory made international headlines (via assorted US and

“When the $27m ticket came up, everybody was

From his home in Australia, Mandel sent out a