rationalskepticism.org

There actually is a precedent for someone buying every ticket in a lottery, thus ensuring that the person would be holding a jackpot-winning ticket. The Romanian mathematician Stefan Mandel managed to win the lottery 14 times in the 1980s and '90s through a scheme similar to the one considered above.

According to a profile of Mandel in The Hustle, he recruited investors to put up the money needed to buy every ticket in the Virginia lottery. Once the jackpot grew to $27 million in February 1992 — high enough to make the plan theoretically profitable — Mandel used a bank of computer printers to print out every combination of numbers from that lottery. A group of couriers then dropped off thousands of tickets at a time at lottery retailers around the state.

Though logistical snags prevented all of the combinations from being entered in time, the consortium still won the $27 million prize.