Terence Tao, a maths professor from University of California, Los Angeles told the BBC that a pattern like this being a winning series of numbers is rare "for any single lottery"."It's similar to how in any given hand of poker it would be unlikely to draw a straight flush, but if one looks at hundreds of thousands of hands at once then it actually becomes quite likely that a straight flush would be drawn," he added.There were accusations of fraud after 20 people shared the jackpot in South Africa's national lottery in December 2020, when the numbers five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10 were drawn.Natalia Escudero started screaming on camera and told colleagues at public broadcaster RTVE she was "not coming to work tomorrow" - before later learning she had won just €5,000 ($4,349; £3,784).More than 4,000 correctly picked five out of the six numbers - all multiples of seven - and ended up collecting just £15 each for their win."