The Man Who Won the Lottery 7 Times — Genius or Gambler?
“Richard Lustig of Orlando, Florida won seven state-sponsored lottery prizes between 1993 and 2010, totaling $1,052,205.58. His story sparked a national debate.”
Richard Lustig was an entertainment booking agent living in Orlando, Florida, when he bought a scratch-off ticket in January 1993 and won $10,000. At the time, he and his wife were living paycheck to paycheck. Their son had just been born two weeks earlier, and they couldn't afford the remaining hospital bills. The roof of their old house leaked so badly they kept buckets around the house to catch rainwater. That first prize paid off the hospital and fixed the roof.
But it was only the beginning. Over the next 17 years, Lustig won six more grand prizes in Florida state-sponsored lottery games. His complete verified record: $10,000 from a scratch-off (January 1993), $13,696.03 from Florida Fantasy 5 (August 1997), a trip to Los Angeles valued at $3,594.66 from a scratch-off second-chance drawing (June 2000), an Elvis-themed trip to Memphis valued at $4,966 from another second-chance drawing (October 2001), $842,152.91 from Florida Mega Money (January 2002), $73,658.06 from Fantasy 5 (November 25, 2008), and $98,992.92 from Fantasy 5 (August 2010). His total verified winnings: $1,052,205.58 before taxes. Two of those seven 'wins' were vacation trips worth under $5,000 each — a detail frequently left out of headlines.
Lustig was adamant he had a system. In interviews with ABC News, CNN, The Rachael Ray Show, and Good Morning America, he outlined his core principles: never use quick picks (computer-generated numbers), always pick your own numbers by hand, play the same numbers consistently every single draw, and reinvest all winnings into more tickets. He told Forbes in 2016: 'When the lottery came to Florida, I was like everybody else — buying haphazardly, buying quick picks, buying tickets with no plan. Like everybody else, I was losing all the time.' He self-published a book in 2010 called 'Learn How to Increase Your Chances of Winning the Lottery,' which reached #3 on Amazon's self-help list in 2013.
The backlash was fierce and well-documented. Financial journalist Felix Salmon publicly noted that Lustig 'never actually comes out and says that he's a net winner' — raising the uncomfortable question of whether he'd spent more on tickets than he'd ever won. CNN Money took down their video profile of him after what they described as 'a firestorm of criticism.' Personal finance author Zac Bissonnette characterized the advice as a disguised gambling reinvestment cycle, not a real strategy. Mathematically, his approach offered zero edge — every combination in every draw has identical odds regardless of history.
Despite the controversy, Lustig lived well. He drove a Jaguar, owned a Harley-Davidson, and bought his son a BMW. He told Time magazine: 'I've been rich and I've been poor, and I like rich a whole lot better.' He credited his post-lottery stability to smart financial planning — he immediately hired an accountant, paid off all debts, and only then bought anything fun. This practical advice may be his most valuable legacy, regardless of whether his 'method' had any merit.
Richard Lustig died in 2018 at age 67 in Orlando. Whether he was a lottery genius, a lucky gambling addict, or something in between, his seven verified wins remain unmatched in American lottery history. And the debate he sparked about whether you can 'beat' a random number game continues to this day.