From Struggling Survivor to Lotto Legend: The Journey of Stefan Mandel

Stefan Mandel, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, won the lottery 14 times after devising a method to secure a jackpot win. Born to Jewish parents in Romania during World War II, he sought to emigrate to Israel during the communist era but needed significant funds to do so.

Earning just $88 a month, Mandel developed a formula to cover all possible lottery combinations to ensure a win. Alongside friends, he submitted forms and won a first prize of 72,782 lei, equivalent to 18 years of salary. "In 1959, I was living in a modest apartment and began working on an algorithm to cover every lotto possibility," Mandel explained. "In Romania, the lottery involved choosing six numbers out of 40. That meant 3.8 million combinations to cover and it was costly. I sought a formula to reduce those combinations to the smallest number possible. This was before computers. I did it all on paper... I ended up with 8,000 pages. Once, a gust of wind scattered everything, and I had to start from scratch, taking at least a month. This happened twice more until I hung a sign: 'Knock before entering.' I worked on it for five years, finally reducing it to 569 combinations out of 3.8 million. There are countless combinations. 1,2,3,4,5,6 is just one, but in any order, for the lottery, it’s the same."

After winning, Mandel moved to Israel with his parents: "My mother cried, fearing I'd die of hunger. As they boarded the plane, they saw headlines: 'Stefan Mandel wins the lottery.' She stopped crying, at least knowing I wouldn’t starve."

In Israel, Mandel married and started a family, and in the 1980s moved to Australia to refine his winning strategy. He began printing lottery tickets with selected numbers, paying for them only when submitted at official outlets. He won the first prize and many secondary prizes; his frequent wins led lottery companies to increase the draw from 40 to 45 balls. This created a challenge, requiring him to fill out about 8 million combinations. He collaborated with mathematician Paul Erdős to refine the winning strategy in a week. With the new method, Mandel won the Australian lottery's top prize 11 more times.

After Australian laws forbade pre-printed tickets, requiring them to be filled manually, Mandel moved to the U.S., winning again with pre-printed tickets, securing a $27 million first prize and about $900,000 in secondary prizes. "Knowing I’d win meant calculating the odds that others would buy winning tickets too, potentially sharing the prize. So, the jackpot had to be at least three times our investment. If you spend a million covering possibilities, you need a minimum prize of three million to profit," he explains. Subsequently, Mandel left the lottery world and returned to Israel.

However, his return was not warmly welcomed. Upon his arrival, Israel's Securities Authority investigated him. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison and fined 100,000 shekels but wasn’t present at the trial as he was abroad. After being denied a retrial, labeled a fugitive, Mandel relocated to Vanuatu, describing it as a "prison" despite its beauty. "If I could, I'd return home tomorrow, to my family in Israel," he asserts.

His plight turned Mandel from an 'icon' to a fugitive yearning to restore his reputation. "This ordeal destroyed my life. I can’t visit family or do anything," said Mandel. In March 2020, he gained permission to return to Israel for a trial without arrest, but the pandemic delayed proceedings. Currently, he resides in London.

Video courtesy of Kan 11