Winning the lottery might seem pretty straightforward, you buy a ticket and wait for the numbers to be drawn and then you either win or you don't.
But it turns out the next steps are a bit more complicated as the team at the National Lottery has to do rigorous checks to confirm whether you've actually won a prize.
Anita Pires has worked with the customer service team at The National Lottery for 16 years and during that time she's had the pleasure of informing numerous people that they had become millionaires.
One of the most memorable wins she's ever taken in the call centre came from Les Scadding in 2009, who after going £68 overdrawn and worrying about how he was going to pay his mortgage, discovered he had scooped a £45.5m EuroMillions jackpot.
At the time it was one of the biggest winners Anita had ever taken a call from, which is what makes it stick in her brain, but she claims she's since been "fortunate" enough to confirm wins in the triple figures in the millions.
Speaking to The Mirror, Anita explained what her position entails, saying: "The main job is taking in inbound calls from customers and players either to check our products and results or more importantly winners wanting to check a scratchcard or ticket thinking they've won thousands, millions or multi-millions.
"Every call we treat as a winning call, they've brought a product from us that wins money, so we check all the details in order to confirm the win and it's amazing when you can do that. You end up sitting up straighter a little bit, there's all this excitement."
And when it comes to reactions from the other end of the phone, she claims the emotions really do vary - between screaming and jumping for joy to people breaking down sobbing in disbelief.
"One of my most recent wins was a couple with a scratchcard for a million pounds, so for me to confirm the one million I had to count the zeros following on from the one to make sure that there are definitely six zeros and I'm not confirming something I shouldn't.
"They were absolutely ecstatic, you could hear the laughter of the two in the background.
"Another winner who had a £250,000 scratchcard must have had half his village in his front room because all I could hear was this screaming and shouting.
"But I'm most sympathetic to them when they cry, they literally sob sometimes. I've had one where I just had to step back and say 'get it out of your system, I'm here'.
"And they're sobbing on the call, they become worried that they're going to drop the call or lose you and I've had that a few times, but most of the time it's joy and tears of joy."
However, it's a joy Anita will likely never experience firsthand for herself as she's not allowed to purchase her own lottery tickets, as the job forbids her from doing so.
The expert went on to break down the stages that occur when someone calls claiming they have won the lottery, which have to be thorough to ensure the rightful ticket-holder is paid out
An incident like this occurred in 2021 when two men were jailed after attempting to claim a £4million jackpot from a scratchcard they had fraudulently obtained with a stolen debit card. Mark Goodram and John Watson from Bolton were sentenced to 18 months each.
Unsurprisingly there is plenty of secrecy around the exact procedure for checking a winning ticket, but they did give away a little bit of info, with Anita saying: "We cannot share certain aspects but rest assured, the process is incredibly rigorous to ensure no stone is left unturned when it comes to confirming someone is the legitimate ticketholder.
"In the initial stages, information around which shop the winning ticket was bought in and what day and time it was purchased etc. is sought from the ticketholder and cross-checked. If this information is correctly provided, the claim is further investigated and when all checks have been passed, the claim is validated and paid out.
"The most important thing for ease of validation is to be in possession of your ticket and the required validation information. For instance, if you paid by card in a retailer, this transaction would show under your bank statement."
If you bought a paper ticket in-person from a retailer, the expert advises signing the back of it after purchase so you can confirm it is indeed yours if there's a winning claim to make.
You may then want to put it away somewhere safe until after the draw, as the ticket itself is required to be shown during the validation stages.
The customer service team has heard of tickets being hidden in some very unexpected places over the years including in the dictionary under L for the lottery, inside of a microwave, and stapled to a shirt pocket for safekeeping.
But as a general rule of thumb for safety they advise always using the National Lottery website or app when playing to "ensure you don't miss out on a huge prize".
Anita went on to say that lottery winners have 180 days from the day of the draw to claim their prize if they believe they have a winning ticket and to do this they can call the National Lottery Line or send an email.
And even if you lose your ticket for some reason and aren't in possession of it, within 30 days of the draw there's still a chance you could win if you believe you have a genuine claim. All you have to do is make the claim in writing to Camelot.
A full investigation will then be carried out and a prize may be paid at Camelot's discretion if no alternative valid claim has been submitted during the 180 days.
But what happens if no one comes forward to claim a prize?
If the prize is £50,000 or above and the winning ticket was bought in retail, The National Lottery has a licence obligation to publicise the existence of the unclaimed prize by the 25th day after the draw.
They will then identify the unclaimed prize area, which has to conform to a minimum population size of 75,000 so as not to compromise the choice of the ticket holder (as and when they come forward) as to whether to take publicity or remain anonymous.
Once the unclaimed prize area has been signed off for use, a number of awareness-raising activities will take place to prompt the winner to check their ticket. This may include, as an example, radio and television interviews, a fleet of ad vans hitting the local area or newspaper articles being printed.
If the prize remains unclaimed there may be further activities as appropriate until the ticket's expiry date to help find the winner. All unclaimed prizes have 180 days from the date of the draw to be claimed.
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