How One Mathematician Beat the Lottery 14 Times Using Pure Math

A 91-year-old mathematician proved that winning the lottery doesn’t always come down to pure luck. Stefan Mandel, born in Romania, managed to hit the jackpot an incredible 14 times by using math, patience, and a carefully planned system.

Growing up poor in the 1930s, Mandel never received formal training in mathematics. He worked as an accountant, earning very little, but spent his free time obsessed with numbers—especially probability and patterns like the Fibonacci sequence. One night, while watching a lottery draw on TV, he noticed something others ignored: lotteries weren’t truly random if you approached them the right way.

After years of studying number combinations, Mandel created a system he called “combinatorial condensation.” Instead of guessing blindly, his method allowed him to narrow outcomes so he could reliably predict most of the winning numbers, leaving only a few to chance. That shifted the odds from nearly impossible to actually manageable.

His first big proof

In March 1965, Mandel teamed up with a colleague who funded the tickets. The result?

• One jackpot

• Several smaller prizes

• $20,000 total winnings

Even though Mandel personally took home just $4,000, the experiment worked—and he knew it could be scaled.

Turning math into millions

Years later, Mandel moved to Australia and launched a lottery investment group. The idea was simple:

• If the jackpot was bigger than the total cost of all combinations, buying every possible ticket guaranteed profit.

By 1982, his group had won 12 Australian jackpots, raking in millions and catching the attention of authorities. Still, everything he did was legal.

The biggest win of all

Mandel later set his sights on Virginia, where lottery rules were unusually loose:

• Unlimited ticket purchases

• Home printing allowed

• Only 44 numbers, not 54

That cut the number of combinations down to about seven million. When the jackpot passed $27 million in February 1992, Mandel raised $9 million from 2,500 investors and printed nearly every possible number combo.

The outcome was massive:

• $27 million jackpot

• $6 million in smaller prizes

• $33 million total return

His belief was simple: “Using math correctly guarantees a fortune.”

Why it ended

Global media attention followed, along with investigations by the FBI and CIA. No crimes were found—but lottery rules changed fast:

• Ticket purchase limits

• In-store buying only

• Bans on large-scale investments

• Improved randomization

Those changes shut down Mandel’s strategy for good. Attempts to repeat it in other countries failed under tighter rules.

Mandel’s six-step lottery formula

Here’s the system that made it all possible:

• Calculate every possible number combination

• Target jackpots worth at least three times that total

• Raise enough money to cover all combinations

• Print or buy tickets for every number set

• Submit tickets legally

• Collect winnings and pay investors