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But after three days of what he calls “complete mess and chaos” he decided to give up on making a deal with any lottery winner altogether.

“This whole process has been overtaken by greed. People are asking for millions, and so to me, the deals that I see being done are not economically viable. Absolutely not a sound investment decision,” Sax said. He declined to divulge details of what exactly transpired between him and a number of lottery winners.

… the deals that I see being done are not economically viable. Absolutely not a sound investment decision Lottery applicant, real estate investor Daniel Sax

Chalabi, too, confirmed that he knew of bids directed to lottery winners that ranged between “$5 million and $7 million.

“You can’t sell that licence now, but there are people who are willing to pay and who are lining up to get into a position that will enable them to be part of this market in the future,” Chalabi said.

David Phillips, the former president of the Ontario Cannabis Store, believes that the AGCO has been quite clear in the language they have used all along in terms of the ownership and control lottery winners must have over a future cannabis store.

“But it seems that there is now a lot of creative thinking going about to determine ways that novel partnerships can be entered into. My advice to lottery winners is, be extremely careful as to how your lawyers and consultants structure any deal because the AGCO will apply very rigorous scrutiny and they are well-equipped to do so,” Phillips told the Financial Post.

Ontario’s cannabis lottery period ends on Dec. 13, 2019 — after that point, the provincial government has said that it would “open up” the retail licence application process. There are no clear rules how exactly that process will work, but the ownership guidelines spelled out by the AGCO technically only apply as long as the lottery period is in place.