The District of Columbia appears to be pressing ahead with its plans to sole-source its mobile sports betting contract to DC Lottery operator Intralot.

On Monday, the DC Council’s Committee on Finance and Revenue held a public hearing into its plans to authorize sports betting under the control of the DC Lottery, which is powered by technology provider Intralot. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser signed the Sports Wagering Lottery Amendment Act last week.

Since DC contains no casinos, the legislation authorizes the DC Lottery to offer mobile wagering. Monday’s discussion centered around Council chair Phil Mendelson’s controversial proposal to allow the DC Lottery to skip the required competitive procurement process to identify a mobile betting tech provider, effectively handing the contract to Intralot while leaving other firms out in the cold.

Some of the day’s sharpest criticism of this proposal came from Dorothy Brizill, exec director of DC Watch, a longtime watchdog of DC’s occasionally sketchy local politics. Brizill called the attempt to exempt the DC Lottery from the procurement process “simply unprecedented.”

New York’s sports bettors could have legal wagering options this spring after state gaming regulators approved draft betting rules.

On Monday, the New York State Gaming Commission approved draft regulations that will allow four upstate commercial casinos to add retail sportsbooks to their properties. The regulations, which have the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, are now subject to a 60-day public comment period, potentially allowing for the launch of legal wagering in early April (too late for March Madness, but just in time for baseball).

Monday’s meeting saw the draft rules approved unanimously and without comment by any commissioner. Those with experience following the state’s regulatory meetings have grown accustomed to the pace of the proceedings, which often seem to be conducted with the suspicion that there’s a ticking time-bomb underneath the table.

New York’s plans don’t specifically include tribal gaming operators, who insist their gaming compacts with the state allow them to maintain product parity with commercial operators. Some tribes, like the Oneida Indian Nation, have already struck prospective sports betting deals with technology partners.

Online gambling sites targeted by Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) may have the last laugh as police around the globe target hunt down the perpetrators.

On Monday, global crime-fighters Europol said a joint operation was targeting end users of the WebStresser DDoS-for-hire service that the agency helped dismantle in April 2018. Launched in 2015, WebStresser had over 151k registered customers who used the service to launch around 4m DDoS attacks on websites for blackmailing purposes for the low, low monthly cost of just €15.

Europol now says that WebStresser’s demise provided the agency with “a trove of information” and “actions are currently underway worldwide to track down” the service’s end users. Europol says its Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) is working with the Dutch Politie, the British National Crime Agency and other authorities on these efforts.

In the UK, actions against local WebStresser users have resulted in the seizure of over 60 digital devices for further analysis. Other live operations targeting DDoS scammers are in the works and over 250 users of WebStresser and similar DDoS-for-hire services “will soon face action for the damage they have caused.”

Macau authorities have detained a Canadian man for allegedly attempting to steal €249m from a local gaming operator.

On Saturday, Macau’s Judiciary Police (PJ) announced that it had detained a 61-year-old ethnic Chinese man who holds Canadian citizenship. This man, identified only as Leao, had attempted to convince a local bank to transfer the enormous sum of money to a Hong Kong bank account held under his name.

PJ spokesperson Leng Kam Lon said Leao had entered an unidentified Macau bank last Monday and presented bank officials with a remittance slip and a letter of authorization purportedly issued by the unidentified “local entertainment company” okaying the transfer.

Bank officials grew suspicious of the transfer request after comparing the signature on the authorization letter to the sample signature in the bank’s records. Upon being told that the bank wasn’t prepared to authorize the transfer, Leao immediately legged it, taking the two apparently bogus documents with him.