BF2S Forums Canada's Luckiest Man (5 time lottery winner)

Seguro Ndabene, arguably Canada's luckiest man, has lucked out again.

In a Calgary courtroom Tuesday, the Alberta man received the green light to finally collect a $17-million lottery prize that had been mired in a legal dispute – his fifth win in five years. In total, the married father of three has raked in more than $19.1-million from lottery tickets since 2004.

But the multi-lotto winner wasn't in the mood to celebrate after his court victory. Instead, he is threatening to sue the Western Canada Lottery Corp. for not turning over his latest and largest prize sooner.

“This was amounting to torture, to torture me because I won several times. I cannot refuse to accept the money that I won rightfully. I played the ticket,” Mr. Ndabene told reporters.

“[WCLC] should have known better. If they are willing to negotiate, we'll negotiate. If they're not willing to negotiate, the court will decide what I'm entitled to, plus reasonable interest,” he later added.

Mr. Ndabene, who immigrated to Canada from Mozambique in 1984, has been fighting to get his money since February, when he tried to claim his winning Super 7 lottery ticket that was drawn Jan. 16.

The holdup occurred after Tony Koprnicky came forward and said he was entitled to some of the winnings because the ticket was bought as part of a group purchase. Mr. Koprnicky is a relative of the owner of the lottery kiosk in Airdrie, Alta., where Mr. Ndabene purchased the ticket.

The WCLC launched an investigation and eventually turned the complicated case and the $17-million over to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench to make a decision.

However, the case fell apart after Mr. Koprnicky abandoned his claim and no other people came forward to contest Mr. Ndabene's win.

Mr. Ndabene, who lives in Airdrie, a small city north of Calgary, could receive the money, which was being held in an interest-bearing account by the courts, as early as Tuesday.

His lottery winning streak began on Oct. 13, 2004, when a ticket he bought hit a $1-million jackpot. At the time, he was working for a forestry service in Behchoko, N.W.T., northwest of Yellowknife.

Mr. Ndabene's win attracted local media attention partly because it took about eight months for him to claim his prize. “I just kept cool after the draw. I was busy and not in a rush for it,” he told a Yellowknife-based paper in 2005.

Mr. Ndabene, who has a diploma in business administration, also told the newspaper he used random numbers and had no advice for curious lottery players. “If I had the formula, I would be winning every week,” he said. He said he planned to use that jackpot to pay down his mortgage and build up his children's education fund.

He went onto win $100,000, $57,000 and $1-million in other draws before hitting his biggest jackpot yet in January.

WCLC spokeswoman Andrea Marantz said while multi-lotto winners seem to defy the odds, there have been a few over the years, including a Manitoba woman who won two $1-million jackpots within a year. She said the lottery corporation has tight security measures and that every major win is reviewed before money is released.

While Mr. Ndabene's level of luck isn't being publicly questioned by the WCLC, it has befuddled mathematicians.

“There is always a possibility, but the probability is absolutely almost next to nothing … so, so tiny, a fraction of a per cent,” explained Sean Graves, a math instructor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.