A Humewood bakery handing out tickets for tonight's massive Powerball lottery draw was visited by police officers this afternoon after a man reportedly smashed the front window of the west-end business.
World Class Bakers has been flooded with new customers over the last two days after it announced it would be giving away lottery tickets.
At around noon Wednesday, as the bakery was in the middle of handing out a new round of Powerball tickets, witnesses said a man, who had been pacing in front of the business, threw a sandwich board through the window, spraying the bakery with shattered glass.
According to police, the man was denied entry to the bakery after trying to bypass the line to obtain a ticket.
Police said the man swore and spit at one of the bakery's employees after he was barred from store. The man also allegedly tried to grab money from the worker's hand before leaving and smashing the window.
A suspect was arrested at the scene and subsequently charged with assault, mischief and resisting arrest.
Despite the disturbance, a line of eager patrons continued to form outside World Class following the incident.
All tickets were handed out by 2 p.m.
The lottery, which now has a jackpot valued at about US$1.5 billion, is believed to be the largest lotto jackpot ever offered anywhere in the world and has prompted many Canadians to cross the border to get a ticket.
The Humewood bakery capitalized on the Powerball fever on Tuesday by handing out tickets to 500 customers in exchange for a minimum $20 purchase at the store.
Following the success of the promotion, World Class Bakers began handing out another 1,000 tickets today.
A lineup started to form outside the bakery at around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning and continued to grow throughout the day.
In Canadian dollars, the jackpot sits at around $2 billion. Each Powerball ticket costs $2.
Speaking to CP24 outside the bakery Wednesday morning, some ticket-holders told CP24 they would give some of the money away to charity, family and friends.
“(It’s) definitely way too much money to even understand how much but (I’d) help family, help friends, help people, help strangers. That’s just the way to go with that kind of money,” one woman said.
While you do not have to be a U.S. resident to purchase a ticket in the lottery, there is confusion about whether some Canadians ticket-holders would be eligible to collect the winnings.
A U.S. law claims that if a Canadian buys a ticket in the United States, brings it back to Canada and then tries to bring it back in to the U.S., they would be violating a law that prohibits importing “immoral articles.”
The law states that “all persons are prohibited from importing into the United States from any foreign country… any lottery ticket, or any printed paper that may be used as a lottery ticket, or any advertisement of any lottery.”
There's also the question of how much a Canadian might have to fork over in taxes. The amount of tax charged on winnings varies from state to state. In New York State, lottery winnings would be subject to an 8.82 per cent state tax, in addition to a 30 per cent "Federal Non-resident Alien withholding" tax.
On 'The Late Show' last night, comedian Stephen Colbert warned Canadians that they are "playing with fire" when they buy Powerball tickets.
"...if one of you moose-munching iceholes wins American’s billion-dollar Powerball, Donald Trump will be elected president of the United States," Colbert told his viewers.
"He’s going to build a wall between the U.S. and Canada and make the Powerball winner pay for it."
All jokes aside, whoever does win the lucrative lottery will likely want to sit down and think up a strategy.
“When you win a kind of amount this big, you don’t think clearly,” Cynthia Kett of Stewart & Kett Financial Advisors Inc. told CTV News. “You need to strategize a plan. Interview types of planners and see what kind of advisor would be best for your situation.”
For most people, the debate will probably turn out to be purely academic. The odds of winning the mega-prize: One in 292.2 million.
If nobody wins Wednesday’s prize, the pot is expected to climb to a staggering US$ 2 billion.
The Powerball draw will be held Wednesday night at 10:59 p.m. (ET).
- With files from CTV News.
