An economist who won the lottery an astonishing, and envy-inducing, 14 times is sharing his secret to beating the odds and picking the right numbers to pocket that cash. And it’s a lot simpler than you might think.

Stefan Mandel was reportedly earning $88 a month in his native Romania when he won the lottery for the first time. A second lucky win allowed him to move his family to Australia, where he won a further 12 times, amassing millions of dollars, using what he called a “number-picking algorithm.”

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Mandel’s lottery ‘hack’ involves firstly calculating the total number of possible combinations (for a lottery that requires six numbers, we’re talking about 3,838,380 variants). Next, narrow down lotteries where the jackpot is three or more times the number of possible combinations… and simply raise enough money through investors to buy a ticket for each sequence.

Then, simply win the cash and pay back your investors. Mandel pocketed $97,000 after a $1.3 million win in 1987. After 12 lotto wins, though, Australia eventually changed their laws making it harder for Mandel to work the system.

He then turned his attention to the US - in particular the Virginia lottery because it had some of the cheapest lotto tickets on the market and ‘only’ 7 million number combinations. In 1992, the lottery champ and his team took the jackpot, as well as six second prizes, 132 third prizes, and thousands of minor prizes, to bag more than $30 million.

The epic win resulted in a four-year investigation by the CIA and the FBI who eventually found that technically Mandel hadn’t broken any rules. As with any great rags-to-riches story, though, Mandel got carried away with his genius strategy and was eventually jailed for 20 months in Israel for attempting the same scheme.

Now US and Australian law no longer allows for the purchase of lottery tickets in bulk (you have to buy them directly from retailers).

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