Charisa Bossinakis
When you enter the lottery, there are loads of different ways to attack it.
You could use special numbers that you hold dear to you, repeat the digits every single chance, switch them up, or try to notice a pattern.
Or, you could be like Aussie man Stefan Mandel, who came up with a simple math quotation that has seen him win more than a dozen times.
Lottery Critic reported that the Romanian-born Aussie cracked the near-perfect formula for the Powerball.
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In the 1950s, while living in Romania, Mandel was working as an economist, where he began to devise a plan to win some serious cash.
He found the perfect formula to predict five of the six winning numbers.
After four years of trying to create the arrangement, Mandel, along with three of his friends, finally put it to the test.
While they intended to win the second-biggest prize due to predicting five out of the six numbers, they came in first in a twist of events.
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He ended up winning 72,783 leu (AUD $23,509), equating to almost two decades of his salary.
Despite having to split the money between the four of them, it was enough for Mandel to relocate to Israel before moving to Australia.
And, shortly after moving Down Under, Mandel began fine-tuning his plan.
He enlisted the help of investors and started purchasing as many tickets as possible.
His operation was so precise that he even had ticket receipts placed in storage.
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And predicting five of the six numbers for lottery entries, Mandel ended up winning 12 times.
However, Australian officials began to take note of Mandel and his convenient ‘luck’.
They changed the rules in an attempt to stop Mandel from constantly winning despite his game plan being perfectly legal at the time.
But Mandel continued to find loopholes in the rules, which included him opening a lotto firm at one point. However, due to the regulations altering, he eventually threw in the towel.
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He then relocated to the US with his sights set on the Virginia lottery.
At the time, there were 7.1 million possible number combinations in the pool, and tickets were priced at only $1 (AUD $1.50).
Mr Mandel convinced 2,500 Australian investors to pool $2,500 (AUD $3,743) each.
Two years later, in 1992, the jackpot reached $27 million (AUD $40.4m), with Mandel and his team purchasing every single ticket.
His winnings resulted in a four-year legal battle, for which the CIA and FBI investigated him.
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However, he faced no legal woes in the end.
In 1995, he filed for bankruptcy.