The Man Who Won The Lottery 14 Times Shares His Secrets

Moving again

This time, with even more money, Stefan Mandel was able to get his family a visa to pick up and move to Australia, which at that time was still cheap to live in but had a very strong economy. Mandel and his family would eventually get Australian citizenship. This would enable him to do business in the British Commonwealth countries, as Australia was a part of the British Commonwealth at that time. This gave him access to the UK lottery system and a lot of money.

Hitting Australia

Stefan Mandel knew exactly what to do in order to get his lotto business off the ground. First, he had to get the slips of paper themselves. Then he got a whole bunch of laser printers (which were giant and brand new technology at the time) in order to print off his tickets. Mandel would then go to the heads of the Australian lottery and say that he wanted to buy all of the numbers, which he did. He then sat back, waited, and won, distributing the winnings to his investors.

Thinking it through

There are all types of things to consider before making a lotto purchase at this scale. First is when exactly to do it. Sometimes there are lotto amounts where the grand prize is a measly $500,000. Then there are other times when the grand prize is nearly a half a billion dollars. Additionally, after taking into account what would happen if the pot was split and the taxes that would have to be paid, it could take a lot of waiting before the perfect pot comes along.

Twelve

Stefan Mandel would corner the Australian lottery twelve times. He had a literal army of people who were filling out and submitting tickets to various convenience stores around Australia all at the same time. The people submitting the tickets would then get the receipts and, in an organized and orderly fashion, put the receipts into storage. Once the winning ticket (which he invariably had) was called, his team would get the receipt and the company would claim the winnings.

Changing the laws

As it turns out, none of what Stefan was doing was actually illegal. There was nothing in the lottery rules a which stipulated that one person could not buy every lotto ticket. But little by little Australia started to catch on. First, they made it illegal for one person to buy all the tickets, so Mandel got five partners. Then they said that a group of individuals could not buy up all the tickets, so Mandel created a lotto firm. Eventually, Australia enacted so many laws that it became tough to operate.

Credits: worldation.com