NEWS & NOTES

PokerStars Founder Isai Scheinberg will not serve any prison time connected to his conviction on illegal gambling charges in connection with keeping PokerStars serving U.S. players while iGaming was banned. Honoring the recommendations of federal authorities in the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on Wednesday sentenced Isai Scheinberg to time served for his crimes related to illegal gambling. Scheinberg and his son Mark, who sold the company in 2014 for $4.9 billion, will also pay a $30,000 fine. • A move to introduce cashless gaming machines across the Australian state of New South Wales has been welcomed by anti-gambling advocates, despite concerns that gamblers using a pre-loaded card could lose the sense they were gambling with “real” money. The state government is proposing reforms that would require poker machine gamblers to register and pre-load money to a government-issued card, which would operate in a similar way to the cashless Opal cards for the public transport network. • The Navajo Department of Health last week reported 17 new Covid-19 cases but no death. The total number of Covid deaths in the Navajo Nation remains at 558 as reported last week. The total number of cases is now 10,421. • When Diablo Canyon Power Plan in central California closes in 2025 and 12.000 acres it operates on is transferred by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo, the land will not be used for a casino. The “Diablo Lands” are the ancestral homeland to the tribe. According to a tribal spokesman, “We intend to care for the Diablo Lands in such a way that it can thrive and its deep history can be respected. It is clear that many others besides indigenous people feel the same way.”