Lovely Lady

What is Lovely Lady?

The system starts with domains that have already been identified by authorities. Trace2Trace then crawls them, looking for technical connections and similarities.

These include shared hosting, DNS clusters, source-code strings, tracking systems, logos and favicons. The system can also follow redirects and other mechanisms that may not be visible through a conventional web request.

A website might initially appear to be a normal local site, while behind it sits an iframe, JavaScript redirect or a chain of other pages leading to the actual gambling destination.

How to play Lovely Lady

One Foundation’s operating licence was suspended for six days after the DIA identified accounting failures relating to gambling proceeds, as well as a failure to surrender a licence for one of its pokies venues when required by law.

The DIA also issued new financial guidance for class 4 operators, with the aim of providing greater clarity on their accounting requirements and an explanation of their obligations.

The department said the guidance had been designed to “improve consistency across the sector and help prevent similar issues from occurring in future”.

About Lovely Lady

In October 2024 the then-prosecutor general ordered the freezing of e-wallets and the suspension of mobile lines used by betting agents. Separately, in February this year, officials said regulators were working with the telecoms authority and the media council towards blocking about 80% of betting applications by the end of that month.

Ahmed Badawi, who chairs the House communications committee, said in May that the government would amend the anti-cybercrime law to name online betting explicitly. Life imprisonment was discussed for the gravest offences. No bill number or text has been published.

A separate private member’s bill was tabled by MP Martha Mahrous in January 2025. It proposed prison terms of two to five years and multi-million-Egyptian-pound fines for promoters, agents and payment facilitators. It has also gone nowhere.