The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal.

Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways.

The district received a $750,000 grant from the , which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said, sustainable food and water program director for , which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said.

In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control.

The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.

“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,'” Lane said of that initial state grant.

Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.

This is the second story in The Denver Post’s three-part series exploring the impact of legalized sports betting in Colorado, including the billions spent on wagers, rising addiction rates, and the impact on athletes and the games they play.

Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the , said she reminds her family members and friends who bet on sports that every time they place a wager, they are helping ranchers like those in Maybell access precious water.

“It����ap exponentially more than we could ever imagine,” she said of sports betting’s impact on ranches and water. “Coloradans like to gamble on sports, and water is the beneficiary.”

‘That’s our ticket’

In 2015, the Colorado Water Conservation Board — at the behest of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper — released a report on how to best conserve and protect the state’s water.

“It made a lot of plans. It set a bit of policy, and it identified two big funding needs,” said , director of western water for the .

The board determined at the time that Colorado needed $100 million per year for projects to improve river and stream health and restoration, to replace the agricultural industry’s aging irrigation systems and to conserve as much water as possible.

“The 2015 water plan put up that price tag and then continued on its merry way,” he said.

But the money wasn’t there.

A consortium of groups with interests in the state’s waterways — including environmental, agricultural and recreational organizations — began meeting to figure out how to fund the water plan. They considered various tax schemes, such as asking the state to put a levy on bottled water or rental cars. But none of their ideas came with an easy path to voter approval — something necessary to raise statewide taxes in Colorado.

“We sat around a table for over a year and a half trying to figure out how to do this, and there were no good options,” Jackson said.

Then, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling that offered the answer to funding water projects in Colorado: . That decision overturned the , paving the way for states to legalize sports betting.

“I said, ‘That’s it. That’s our ticket,’ ” Jackson said.

Jackson thought Colorado voters would be sympathetic to the state’s water crisis, caused by decades of drought and climate change. They also wagered that a tax on sports betting would be easier for voters to digest because it would only be paid by those who chose to gamble; if someone didn’t want to pay the tax, then they didn’t have to participate, he said.

The legislature agreed to put it on the 2019 ballot, and voters approved with 51% in favor. The bill established a 10% tax on sports betting companies’ revenue.

“Water certainly pushed it over,” Jackson said.

Sports betting was slated to open in Colorado on May 1, 2020. But the big date was a false start. The COVID-19 pandemic hobbled betting like a quarterback with a bum knee.

“Sports betting was legal, and there were no sports,” Jackson said. “And I thought to myself, ‘What the hell did we just do?’ ”

Gross sports betting revenue in Colorado was $2.6 million, with 25% of wagers placed on table tennis. Tax revenue was just $96,544.

But that freeze on sports did not last, and the gambling money began flowing as rapidly as Clear Creek during the early summer snowmelt.

The revenue stream

Colorado leaders soon realized sports betting was far more lucrative for tax revenues than had been predicted. In the first six years of legalized sports betting, the has reported record-setting figures each year.

“It����ap been hugely successful,” said Drew Peternell, Colorado state director at . “Revenues from sports betting have greatly exceeded any expectations when these mechanisms were put in place.”

By May 2021, when sports betting in Colorado hit its first anniversary, monthly tax revenue hit $635,640 — more than five times what sports wagering had brought in during the same month just a year prior, according to data from the Department of Revenue.

In its most recent report on sports-betting taxes, the department reported it collected $4.4 million in April. The news releases often tout the success of sports betting and the benefits it brings to state waterways. They also include links to , the state’s website for problem gambling resources.

The April tax revenue was 28% more than the amount collected in April 2025, and taxes collected for the current fiscal year through April were at $40.7 million, up 35% over the same period last year.

Thus far, the largest single-month record for tax revenue came in January when the state collected $5 million from $57.8 million in revenue. Coloradans bet $630.2 million, with $119 million wagered on professional football in a month when the Broncos made a run to the conference championship game.

Proposition DD’s 10% tax on net proceeds from sports betting means casinos and companies doing business in Colorado pay the tax after they pay out winning bets and federal taxes.

But the Colorado General Assembly placed a $29 million-a-year cap on sports betting tax revenue when it approved Proposition DD for the statewide ballot. If the state collected more than $29 million each year, the overage was to be refunded to the casinos and licensed gaming companies.

Proposition DD also determined how sports betting proceeds were to be divvied up between programs, with water projects receiving 93% of the tax revenue.

The first projection estimated that sports betting would generate about $16 million annually and that water projects would receive $14.9 million.

Six percent of the tax revenue, or an estimated $960,000, would be set aside in a special fund that would be distributed to Colorado’s three casino cities and other entities that received gaming revenue if they could prove that the new sports betting market caused them to lose money due to decreased bets on traditional gambling and horse racing.

So far, no one has tapped that fund.

Problem gambling would receive just $130,000 annually for establishing a crisis hotline and training for gambling addiction counselors. That amount was increased to $2.5 million annually in 2023.

The Post interviewed seven people whose agencies receive sports betting tax revenue, but only one — Jackson — said they bet on sports themselves. And only one person, who did not want their family’s story to be told publicly, said they sometimes were bothered by the addiction problem because a loved one had died by suicide after gambling away his money.

The tax revenue proved so lucrative that water proponents returned to the legislature to ask for another statewide ballot. This time, which voters approved in 2024, eliminated the $29 million cap, meaning casinos and licensed sports betting companies can no longer receive refunds. And more money will pour into the water conservation fund.

In 2025, water proponents returned to the revenue well again.

This time, they asked the General Assembly to eliminate a clause that had allowed sports betting companies to use their free bet promotions as tax write-offs.

In those promotions, DraftKings, FanDuel and others lure prospective gamblers by offering “free bonus bets” when users apply a promo code advertised on television.

During the NFL’s wild card playoff weekend between Jan. 10 and 12, for example, FanDuel offered a promotion in which bettors would receive $300 when they placed a $5 bet on a game. In the past, FanDuel would have been allowed to write that $300 off as a tax deduction.

But starting in January, that tax deduction was no longer allowed, which means FanDuel and other companies doing business in Colorado pay even more in taxes.

For years, the sports betting companies had argued that losing the tax deduction would force them to pull back on those offers and lead to fewer players, Jackson said. But Colorado watched other states that did not offer similar tax deductions and realized those promotions were still available to gamblers.

“It’s still the primary marketing scheme,” Jackson said. “Colorado was very much an outlier in allowing the deduction.”

Colorado’s water woes

As the planet’s temperature rises, Colorado’s rivers and streams become more threatened by drought.

Last year was for Colorado after the state marked its 10th-warmest year out of 130 years of data, according to the at .  It was the 51st driest year on record, and a swath of northwestern Colorado fell into exceptional drought — the most dire category recorded by the .

And 2026 has brought even hotter and drier weather, with the winter being the warmest on record and snowpack at its lowest levels since records started being kept in 1941.

While drought dries up lakes, rivers and streams, it also impacts almost every person living in Colorado. People live with a shortage of drinking water supplies, irrigation becomes trickier for ranchers, rivers dry up for rafters and fishermen, fish and wildlife struggle, and manufacturers must cope with less water.

Less water also boosts the state’s risk for devastating wildfires and can cause insect infestations or forest diseases to spread.

“Climate change is water change in Colorado, and we need every resource we can to put towards building a more resilient future,” said Lauren Ris, the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s director.

The conservation board intends to help Coloradans address all of those issues with the  through the state’s water plan.

“It primarily focuses on water supply, not water quality,” Ris said.

Projects awarded money during the most recent grant cycle in September included:

• to build a new water storage facility at the Jurgens Reservoir in Weld County that will increase the Lower Latham Reservoir Company’s irrigation supply
• to Adams 12 Five Star Schools to evaluate 54 irrigation systems across 475 acres of irrigated landscape and develop a water conservation plan for the district
• for a Colorado River conservation exhibit at the Confluence Center of Colorado in Mesa County

The water board employs a team of regional grant managers who live and work in the areas they serve. They become familiar with their region’s needs and help decide which projects are worth funding, said Jeannine Shaw, the grants section chief at the water board.

The more organizations applying for a grant together, the more competitive the application becomes, she said. And all of the grants awarded require the applicants to find matching funds, doubling the amount of money available.

And, as more money is spent on sports betting, Colorado can expand its outreach to all four corners of this parched state.

“The difference that makes on the ground is pretty incredible,” Ris said.

In the San Luis Valley, ranchers have long spread water over their grasslands when temperatures start to freeze to create a sheet of ice over the vegetation. As the ice slowly melts during the spring thaw, it seeps into the ground, recharging the water table. It also helps revegetate retired farmland and creates a habitat for wintering birds and wildlife, said Fay Hartman, conservation director for the southwest region of .

In September 2025, American Rivers received a $199,761 grant funded by sports betting to study how the winter ice sheet practice actually benefits the environment. The grant will provide the money for a groundwater study so scientists can collect data by placing groundwater wells at the near Saguache. American Rivers secured $145,956 in matching funds.

There just wasn’t good data on the benefits of creating the winter sheet ice, Shaw said. Different groups wanted to quantify what happens so they would be better informed about the practice and find ways to improve it.

The project, named Frozen Assets, demonstrates the water conservation board’s desire to support innovative ideas for Colorado’s water management, Ris said.

“We’re really able to test some of these theories and use this funding where there is not a whole lot of other opportunity out there to really test some concepts and pilot some things that could have pretty big benefits,” Ris said.

So far, Ris and others who are working to solve Colorado’s water woes believe sports betting revenue is the lifebuoy the state needs to start solving the crisis. It’s not enough, they said, but it’s charting the right course as the state responds to increasing drought, floods and wildfires worsened by climate change.

“We’re thrilled,” she said. “What we really needed was a steady funding stream for water projects, and that����ap what this proved to be.”

READ PART 3 NEXT: Sports betting is changing the game for Colorado’s fans and athletes as big money adds new pressures

A jury in Denver County Court found , 53, guilty of sharing the personal information of a protected person online after she repeated a Denver police commander’s home address during a livestreamed protest and suggested her followers should meet up there so they could “have a pig roast party,” according to an arrest affidavit.

State law prohibits a person from sharing the personal information of police officers online if the person knows that doing so “poses an imminent and serious threat” to the safety of officers or their families. The law protecting police officers’ information has been on the books for more than two decades, but drew renewed attention in 2021 and 2022 when legislators expanded the doxxing protections to other professions, including health care workers, animal control officers and code enforcement officers.

Benson appears to be the first person in the state convicted under the anti-doxxing statute, said Jamie Hubbard, her attorney. She and Benson believe the criminal prosecution was unconstitutional retaliation for her criticism of the Denver Police Department, including in June.

The misdemeanor conviction can be punished with up to a year in jail.

“This commander didn’t like that she was someone who spoke out critically about the police, didn’t like that she sued,” Hubbard said. “So he sees this opportunity to retaliate against her, and he took it.”

Denver police spokesman Sean Towle declined to comment on the case and said had declined to comment as well. Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement that Benson committed a crime, and Denver jurors recognized that.

“We vigorously support all Coloradans’ First Amendment expression, but, as the jury found, the defendant����ap conduct in this case stepped across the line,” he said in the statement.

Benson and Hubbard are not the only ones questioning the validity of the law — the statute is also facing a constitutional challenge in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in a separate federal lawsuit in which a Colorado state trooper accused a process server of violating the anti-doxxing law by including the trooper’s home address in a court filing.

“These are the types of laws that proponents can make sound good when they march them through the legislature, but which 100% of the time get repurposed to the suppression of people’s constitutional rights,” said Adam Frank, a civil rights attorney not involved in either case.

‘A complete and total joke’

Benson made her “pig roast” comments on Sept. 3 at the District 3 Police Station at 1625 S. University Blvd. Benson was livestreaming her protest at the police station when she asked her followers to look up Bell’s home address so they could host a pig roast there. They obliged, finding an address in Centennial. Benson repeated the address and then reiterated her suggestion on the livestream.

“I just wanted to advertise a big party at a pig house. Pigs get together and do pig party stuff,” she said, according to the publicly available affidavit, which includes Bell’s home address and notes that “pig” is a derogatory slang term for a police officer.

In an interview Thursday, Benson said the idea was not serious.

“It was a complete and total joke,” she said. “That����ap what roasts are. Parodies, comedies, satire, sarcasm, hyperbole. That is exactly what that was.”

But at trial, Bell testified about how Benson’s words made him feel, Hubbard said. CBS Colorado, , said Bell established a safety plan that included increased patrols around his home and the installation of a security camera.

“It is tough for a jury who sits in a courtroom and listens to someone testify about their fears, fears for their family, how they were emotionally impacted by what someone else said,” Hubbard said. “It����ap hard for a jury to set that aside and think, ‘Well, that is what the First Amendment is for.'”

Benson will appeal after she is sentenced on May 8, Hubbard said. In the meantime, Benson said she is losing sleep and spending a significant amount of money on the case.

“They’re definitely achieving the goal of chilling my speech, because I am consumed now with every word coming out of my mouth being taken out of context in public settings,” she said, adding that she recently decided not to attend a police community meeting as she typically would have. “I was going to go, and at the last minute, I said to myself, ‘You can’t. They’re successful at getting you prosecuted over lies.'”

Colorado lawmakers expanded the anti-doxxing law after the COVID-19 pandemic, when a number of professionals, particularly in health care, experienced increased harassment. Lawmakers pitched the protections as a way to shield professionals in public service roles from threats.

“As well-intentioned as the law might have been, it has clearly been bastardized and used in a way that violates some pretty fundamental constitutional rights,” said Andy McNulty, an attorney who has represented Benson in past lawsuits.

Challenges to anti-doxxing laws

Three federal courts have found that citizens have a right to publicly identify police officers; attempts to restrict that kind of speech have been found unconstitutional in Washington, Florida and California, said Jason Kennedy, the attorney who is challenging Colorado’s law in federal court.

“Rather (than) proscribing statements that are intended by the speaker to be threatening, the statute criminalizes speech when the speaker ‘reasonably should know’ of a threat posed by others,” Kennedy said. “That is a rather broad and vague standard, and the General Assembly exceeded the limits of its police powers in violation of the First Amendment.”

In that case, Andrew Scott, a professional process server, sought to serve a subpoena from the Colorado Department of Revenue on Charles Hiller, a state trooper, in 2021, according to court records. When he could not connect with Hiller, Scott completed an affidavit of service refusal in which he described his efforts to serve the subpoena and included Hiller’s home address, among other information.

Hiller then pursued professional complaints against Scott on the grounds that the affidavit violated the state’s anti-doxxing law. Scott was never criminally charged, but later sued El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen over the law.

Scott alleged in the lawsuit that he wanted to create a website dedicated to showing police officer misconduct — including posting video showing his efforts to serve the subpoena on Hiller that included some of the trooper’s personal information — but that he was afraid to do so because he might face criminal prosecution under the state’s anti-doxxing law, according to case filings. He sought a declaration that the law was unconstitutional.

Senior Assistant County Attorney Bryan Schmid argued in court filings that Scott failed to show the law is unconstitutional and suggested that Scott could create his website and post his videos with redactions to hide the personal information in the clips.

“Certainly, even with the personal information blurred and/or redacted from the video and affidavit of service, enough information or dialogue would remain to prove his version of the facts and provide him with the vindication he so desperately wants,” Schmid wrote.

In Scott����ap case, the two sides are awaiting the judge’s final ruling on the constitutional issues.

Like many providers around the country, UCHealth sent Houk to , an Englewood-based medical device company that manufactures and sells instruments used for pain management and rehabilitation.

When insurance didn’t cover the , Zynex promised Houk that she could make 10 payments of $25 to cover the cost. What the Westminster patient didn’t know was that this would kick off a year of fighting with a company determined to bill Houk and her insurance providers as often as possible.

The company billed her old insurance. It billed her new insurance. And it sent her bills for more than $2,000 for the $250 device, when she was already paying it off in installments.

“The billing was relentless and terrifying,” Houk said in an interview.

Houk was one of numerous Coloradans caught up in what federal investigators say was a years-long scheme by Zynex to oversupply medical devices and overbill patients seeking opioid-free pain relief. A federal grand jury indicted two former top executives in January, accusing them of orchestrating the fraudulent practices that netted Zynex nearly $1 billion. The company last month avoided further prosecution by admitting to participating in a conspiracy to commit health care fraud, securities fraud, mail fraud and other violations.

Former Zynex employees, in interviews with The Denver Post, said they felt uncomfortable following directives that were unethical or outright illegal. The company routinely fell behind on paying vendors, even as leadership touted rapid growth and record revenue. Staff said they were instructed to continue sending devices and supplies to patients, even when they didn’t request them. Executives told workers not to tell Medicare and Medicaid patients that they would be on the hook for the devices if their insurance didn’t cover them.

“It felt like that was poor business practice to essentially lie to your patients and scam them and create a bad reputation for the company,” said Cori Latousek, a former Zynex employee.

More than a dozen patients told The Post they received supplies that they didn’t order and didn’t need. The scheme has prompted a host of lawsuits from insurance companies and shareholders who say they were duped by Zynex.

At the top of the pyramid stood a chief executive officer who marketed the company’s work as the antidote to the opioid epidemic. Thomas Sandgaard started a to help fund alternatives to painkillers and on the opioid crisis. He was also known for driving expensive sports cars, playing guitar around the office and promoting himself at every turn, former employees say.

Zynex served as a Colorado startup success story — a one-man operation turned public company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. This is the story about how it all fell apart.

Sandgaard, a Castle Rock resident, remained in federal custody as of late February, according to the U.S. Marshall’s Office. His attorney, when contacted by The Post, said he was no longer working on the case. Anna Lucsok, Zynex’s former chief operating officer, who was also indicted, is free on bond. Her attorney, Bill Leone, said, “the allegations in this indictment are just that — allegations. We look forward to vindicating our client at trial.”

Zynex, in a statement, said the company, in its deal with the Justice Department, “took responsibility for past business practices implemented by former company executives.”

“Our new management team is committed to the highest standards of integrity and compliance in everything we do, so we can better serve patients who can truly benefit from our prescription medical devices,” the company said. “We have completely broken from the past and look forward to closing this chapter and making an important contribution to the health care needs of Americans living with chronic pain.”

Rapid growth fueled by ‘moral conundrums’

Sandgaard, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Denmark, founded Zynex in 1996 after a career in the semiconductor, telecommunications and medical equipment industries. He positioned the company’s products as a safe alternative to opioids through the development of electrotherapy technology that alleviates chronic pain.

In February 2019, the company went public. Sandgaard that would help expand the Zynex team.

Rapid growth followed — and industry watchers started taking note.

The company ranked 13th in revenue growth among all medical device companies in the U.S. and Canada on Deloitte’s 2020 Technology Fast 500. Jim Cramer, the popular host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, in 2021 .

Zynex, in the first quarter of 2023, reported 36% year-over-year revenue growth. Orders increased 61%. The following quarter, revenue jumped 22%.

At the end of 2024, Sandgaard said his company hit , and he expected to see 10% to 15% growth in 2025.

“The company is built by our employees,” the founder said in a .

Privately, though, many of those same employees grew concerned over how Zynex was making its money.

Latousek served as a territory manager in Seattle, targeting physical therapy, pain clinics and surgery centers for business. The sales pitch: non-opioid pain management.

She recalled leadership instructing her not to tell patients who received the devices that they automatically get enrolled for supplies, such as batteries and electrodes. Many patients, as a result, she said, received charges that they didn’t authorize.

“That felt really sketchy,” Latousek said. “I would always tell my patients to make sure they opted out.”

Most of the time, Medicare wouldn’t cover the stimulation device or the electrodes. When Zynex dealt with these patients, staff said they told them it cost $250 out of pocket.

But in the spring of 2021, leadership changed the directive. Going forward, the policy was to not tell Medicare patients the cost if their insurance didn’t cover it, former employees said.

“We’re pretty much locking in older vulnerable people on Social Security or fixed incomes who don’t have much money,” said one former Zynex worker, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because they feared career consequences for being associated with the company.

This led to constant “moral conundrums,” the former employee said. They recalled phone calls with elderly patients who said they couldn’t afford the device. Yet Zynex still found a way to send them the units, charging them $250.

When this employee brought up concerns from staff that they were taking advantage of people, they said they were let go.

“I never felt good,” the individual said. “Me getting fired was definitely a blessing.”

Former Zynex staffers said this occurrence was common: Workers who expressed concerns about the company’s practices would be fired or reassigned to different roles. As a result, few employees stayed for long, outside of top executives.

Meanwhile, Zynex was often late paying vendors, employees said. The company offered to pay half if it could receive some of the inventory — an arrangement that left workers feeling uncomfortable.

People in the buying department quickly grew alarmed that their supply orders for batteries and electrodes were so steady. Normally, in this business, there should be fluctuating inventory levels based on customer demand, employees said. But at Zynex, the numbers remained constant.

That was because they were shipping batteries and electrodes over and over to the same patients, these workers said they realized. Many people would return the packages to the warehouse with notes telling Zynex to stop sending them supplies.

Unwanted supplies, unexplained bills

More than a dozen patients told The Post that they received supplies from Zynex that they never ordered and didn’t need.

Josh Kahn, 39, underwent a spinal fusion in 2023, and his surgeon recommended an electrical nerve stimulation machine. The Denver resident got a prescription for the Zynex device.

The implement worked well, Kahn said, but every month he received batteries and electrodes that were unnecessary given his usage of the machine. He stuffed a drawer with all the supplies.

In January 2025, Kahn asked Zynex to discontinue the recurring orders. The company acknowledged his request.

But Kahn continued to get charged $45 a month for the device and supplies, according to the bills he provided to The Post.

“This is becoming a nuisance,” he told the company in an email.

Chris Basser, 49, used a Zynex machine for a back injury he sustained in 2021 after getting hit by a drunk driver. Medicaid covered everything, the Colorado Springs resident said, but he still received packs of six or nine batteries every three weeks.

He said he tried calling the company to cancel the orders, but nobody ever responded. He eventually gave up.

“I thought it was maybe a miscommunication,” Basser said. “I didn’t think of fraud.”

It didn’t seem to matter whether patients paid their bills. Zynex continued to demand payment.

For nearly four years, Zynex has been seeking $250 from Michael Raizen, despite the Denver resident negotiating a deal with the company to pay for his device.

“It’s like a bad rash,” Raizen’s wife, Gail DeVore, said. “No matter what you do, you can’t get rid of it.”

Sports cars, electric guitars and giant banners

Sandgaard served as the face of Zynex — and he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know.

The CEO showed up to the Englewood office in a sports car, and liked to walk around the office with his electric guitar, blasting music, ex-employees said. One former staffer recalled carrying around his amp and handing out T-shirts “like a little groupie.”

Sandgaard hung a large banner on the fourth floor, a spoof of a in which the Zynex founder is holding a machine gun in one hand, a bald eagle perched on his other arm. He’s standing on a fiery hill with a white Zynex flag behind him. Dollar bills flutter around his feet.

“He came off as a man incredibly full of himself,” the former staffer who felt like a groupie said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to fears about future career consequences. “It felt very toxic male CEO.”

Complicating matters was the fusion of Sandgaard’s professional and personal lives.

He was in the midst of a divorce when he enlisted the services of a local psychologist, Dr. Raelynn Maloney. In 2014, the two started dating.

Despite the Zynex founder boasting about the company’s success, Maloney learned that Sandgaard and his firm had accrued significant debt and had exhausted lines of credit, she alleged in a 2025 lawsuit against him and the company.

Desperate, Sandgaard asked Maloney to help save Zynex, she said. The psychologist started attending high-level meetings as an unpaid consultant.

Without the ability to obtain financing, Sandgaard regularly asked Maloney for loans for himself and the company, she alleged. Maloney put up more than $1.1 million in personal assets as cash or collateral throughout 2023 so Sandgaard and Zynex could avoid bankruptcy, the complaint alleges.

Sandgaard eventually bought a house for Maloney and her daughters. She quit her private practice to join Zynex full-time, serving as the head of customer service, billing and parts of human resources, Maloney alleged.

In 2020, Sandgaard , and asked Maloney to help turn that organization around as well, she said.

Eventually, Sandgaard started to pull away from Maloney, she said in the lawsuit. He began seeking sexual experiences with their mutual friends, colleagues and former Zynex employees, she alleged. He sexually harassed his staff, Maloney said, and even put her in charge of handling several sexual harassment complaints made by employees.

“I guess you’re not going to have your fairytale ending,” Maloney said Sandgaard told her.

Maloney did not respond to messages seeking comment. Her lawsuit remains open.

Sandgaard, in court filings, called the complaint a “vengeful recounting of events regarding her romantic breakup.” The lawsuit, his lawyers wrote, “is nothing but a punitive attempt to punish her ex-partner and seek financial relief for the benefits she can no longer reap from their relationship.”

Zynex begins to crumble

The facade eventually started to crumble when insurance providers began to catch on to the scheme.

In December 2024, , the health insurer for service members, suspended payments to Zynex “based upon credible allegations of fraud and its audit of Zynex’s billing,” according to Sandgaard and Lucsok’s indictment. That move represented a huge blow to the company’s business, as TRICARE accounted for a quarter of its revenue.

Other payors also stopped reimbursing Zynex.

, in September 2025, said it had paid out more than $3 million in bodily injury claims to Zynex based on “false and fraudulent records,” the insurer alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in New York.

Zynex, the insurer said, “abused Allstate’s claimants’ insurance coverage by billing for (durable medical equipment) that” Zynex “had no legal right to collect.”

Sandgaard and Lucsok concealed TRICARE’s suspension until March 2025, federal prosecutors said. After the news came out, Zynex’s stock dropped by 51% in one day, dipping to $3.41 per share from $7.

Two days after the disclosure, Sandgaard sold $4.8 million of his stock, even though the company could not afford to buy it back, the indictment states.

Records show Sandgaard and the company as a whole suffered from serious financial woes.

Between 2015 and 2025, the Zynex founder personally racked up more than $321,000 in unpaid taxes to the , court records show.

In December, Zynex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing assets of more than $45 million and debts exceeding $86 million. Among the creditors: U.S. Bank (owed $61.75 million), TRICARE (owed $2.77 million) and the Polsinelli law firm (owed $1.14 million). Maloney is also listed with an “undetermined” claim.

On Jan. 14, a federal grand jury in Rhode Island on charges of conspiracy to commit mail, health care and securities fraud, among other counts.

Federal prosecutors alleged what patients, Zynex employees and insurance providers had been saying for years: The company was billing for and sending people devices and supplies that they didn’t request and didn’t need.

The company collected more than $873 million for its products, including more than $600 million for supplies, “the vast majority of which were the result of fraud,” the government alleged.

Between them, Sandgaard and Lucsok used their sizable earnings to pay for a private jet, a Lamborghini, the McLaren sports car, cosmetic procedures, real estate and the British soccer club, investigators said.

“This case represents a troubling abuse of patients seeking care, as well as the federal health care benefit system,” U.S. Attorney Charles C. Calenda said in a statement announcing the charges.

On Feb. 17, the Justice Department announced Zynex to avoid prosecution, admitting to the long-running scheme. Zynex also agreed to pay up to $12.5 million in fines and forfeit all unpaid claims.

Sandgaard and Zynex also face numerous lawsuits from insurers, patients and shareholders, who say they were duped by the Colorado company.

For patients who used Zynex devices and employees who worked for the Englewood company, the indictment represented an unsurprising turn of events, while also serving as validation that their suspicions were not wrong after all.

“What they were doing was shoveling as much money into their own coffers as possible,” said Houk, the patient who kept getting billed. “It was utterly relentless. A lot of people got hurt by this.”

A bipartisan group of Colorado legislators on Friday filed a bill to block online lottery ticket sales even as the formulates its plan with the support of Gov. Jared Polis.

The online ticket sales are necessary to increase revenue for the lottery’s mission to fund outdoor recreation and wildlife, Colorado Lottery director Tom Seaver said.

​​”Governor Polis continues looking for opportunities to expand the lottery, which allows Coloradans to support great organizations like , which funds parks, trails, recreation, open space, wildlife projects and increases access to the outdoors,” Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said in a statement. “The governor is supportive of increasing consumer convenience and internet freedom.”

The lottery also plans to reverse a longstanding policy that prohibits people from buying tickets with credit cards at retail outlets, such as convenience stores, as it rolls out the online ticket sales, Seaver said.

The bill, , would prohibit that change because Coloradans do not need to go into credit card debt while playing lottery games, said Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, who is one of the bill’s sponsors.

The legislators also believe their bill is necessary to prevent people from becoming addicted to gambling, a problem that has grown since Colorado legalized sports betting in 2020. Lottery tickets sold online in other states resemble web-based slot machines, Bridges said.

Online gambling involving traditional casino games such as slot machines, blackjack and roulette is often referred to as iGaming.

“If you look at what these online scratch ticket companies do, it is iGaming,” Bridges said. “The state not only should not be participating in that, but they shouldn’t be pushing it with more than $10 million in advertising. This is iGaming sponsored by the state to the benefit of the state at a time when Coloradans can’t afford to live here.”

However, the lottery needs to increase revenue to support Great Outdoors Colorado and other programs that protect and promote outdoor recreation, Seaver said. He also said that lottery players are asking for more convenient ways to play the games.

“We can’t sit still and meet our numbers,” Seaver said. “We have to keep growing in order to meet the needs of our recipients.”

Great Outdoors Colorado, a trust fund created in 1992, receives 50% of the lottery’s profits to fund outdoor preservation projects. The receives another 40% of lottery sales, and gets a 10% cut.

But the funding structure for Great Outdoors Colorado is the primary reason the lottery wants to boost sales, Seaver said.

The amount of money Great Outdoors Colorado receives is capped each year, based on a formula involving the Consumer Price Index, and the surplus money is doled out to various organizations, including the for school construction and the for youth programs.

In 2025, however, the cap was not met, and those other groups did not receive lottery funding.

The Colorado Lottery needs to increase revenue, and Seaver sees online sales as a way to get there.

“We have to keep growing in order to meet the needs of recipients,” he said.

The lottery wants to open its online ticket sales by selling the products already offered, including Lotto, Powerball and Mega Millions tickets, as well as various scratch-off games, Seaver said. The plans are still in the developmental phase, so it is unclear exactly how those products would be sold online and delivered to customers.

It is also too early to determine whether the lottery would offer digital scratch-ticket sales and what those games would look like.

“We are a long way from saying what kind of game we would bring,” Seaver said. “From my perspective, you start slow with what kind of games you are going to bring and then progress.”

Back-door path to legalized iGaming?

However, critics are warning that Colorado’s creation of online lottery ticket sales could create a back-door entry to online, casino-style gambling, and that addictive behavior will increase because people can play on their cellphones while charging their credit cards.

Those critics point toward the and its online games, such as Lucky Coins Disco Pig and Pantheon of Olympus Lightning. In those games, players enter a credit card and can play as many times as they want, punching buttons to line up icons such as Greek coins or disco balls to win money. The games feature cartoon drawings and music.

The supports the Colorado bill because the group opposes online casino games, said Oliver Barie, the organization’s government relations director.

The association, which is backed by traditional casinos, including Monarch Casino in Black Hawk, and the state’s casino towns, fears an online lottery will lead to state-sponsored digital casino games.

“We’ve seen other states, where oftentimes the first step is you have online lottery sales,” Barie said. “Depending on the iLottery platform, you could have a traditional ticket on your phone or games that look and feel a lot like a slot machine. That����ap where our concerns are.”

Barie conducted by the association that showed a majority of respondents in Colorado opposed a lottery expansion, purchases charged to credit cards and 18-year-olds playing lottery games online.

Internet casino games often involve bright colors, music and cartoon characters that create a “stimulus reward loop” that increases the risk of addiction, said Jamie Glick, president of the .

“Essentially, what that means is the quicker you can interact with a game and get a response back, the higher the likelihood of addiction,” Glick said. “Those games, just from an addiction standpoint, brain chemistry standpoint, they play like iGaming.”

Glick also said he is concerned that online lottery games could appeal to children because they resemble video games. Online games often ask players to scan driver’s licenses to verify their ages, but Glick said young people find ways to circumvent those rules.

“We certainly don’t think there should be any gambling that could attract younger users,” he said.

Finally, allowing credit card sales increases the risk of addiction because it makes it easier for people to keep playing, Glick said.

“One thing I’m not neutral on is gambling on credit, just because that’s one of the biggest risk factors in developing a gambling problem and also disrupting your life through gambling, when you’re gambling with money that you don’t have,” he said.

Seaver said that the lottery would create guardrails and limits for people playing online.

“We’re not the first to the dance on this, and that’s fine,” Seaver said. “We wanted to see how other states managed the product and responsible gambling over the past few years.”

The lottery will not introduce credit card sales until a comprehensive player health program is established, said Meghan Dougherty, a Colorado Lottery spokeswoman.

“At the same time, when this option is available, it will allow players to use the payment method of their choice,” she said.

Lottery tickets already available online

Colorado residents already can buy state lottery tickets online through third-party vendors, known in the industry as couriers.

Four companies offer online ticket sales in Colorado. Their operations are similar to how DoorDash and Instacart allow people to order food and groceries over their phones or computers, except people do not receive a physical ticket at their doorsteps.

The Colorado Lottery does not license or regulate couriers, Dougherty said. The couriers have agreements with brick-and-mortar stores, and those stores are subject to rules that allow them to partner with couriers.

On , one of the companies doing business in Colorado, players pay a convenience fee on their purchases. For example, Colorado residents on Friday could buy a $5 Orange Cash scratch ticket for $6.50 or a $2 Powerball ticket for $2.50.

Lotto.com owns a convenience store on Wadsworth Boulevard called Players Cafe, said Tom Metzger, the website’s chief executive officer.

There, people can buy lottery tickets or traditional convenience store items. The online sales are routed to that store, where employees scan tickets sold at the store and then send pictures to players to confirm their purchases and log their serial numbers.

If someone buys a scratch ticket, Lotto.com puts a “digital cover” over the numbers so the player can simulate scratching off the latex of a paper ticket with their fingers.

Prize money is deposited into an online wallet, and anyone who wins $600 or more still has to pick up the paper ticket to cash their winnings.

Lotto.com targets people who do not ordinarily play the lottery at convenience stores, Metzger said. The company advertises online and tries to lure people who Metzger describes as “incremental players.” The average transaction is $10, he said.

The couriers do not sell products that are not already offered by the Colorado Lottery.

After the bill was filed Friday, courier companies began scrambling to figure out how it might impact their business models. Bridges said he did not intend to put them out of business and believes they are protected. But others weren’t so clear on the bill’s language.

Metzger said his business would not suffer if the Colorado Lottery eventually offers online ticket sales. He cited New Hampshire, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., as places where couriers and state-sanctioned online lottery sales co-exist.

“We live in an age of convenience and, quite frankly, if you don’t want your players to age out and you to continue returning those funds to good causes, you have to reach players where they are,” Metzger said. “People just don’t have the same behavioral patterns that they used to. So we need to modernize the lottery like everything else is modern.”

Leven Supply, at 300 E. Alameda Ave., paid what was owed the Colorado Department of Revenue, its marketing director, Becky Fairchild, said.

“We paid the money. It’s not like we didn’t want to pay the money before,” she said.

A Colorado Department of Revenue spokesperson declined to confirm the payment, but the store is now open.

Anthony Lygizos, who opened Leven Supply in early 2025, said he paid his employees on the days the store was closed. Lygizos had said the failure to pay the funds, most of which was in withheld sales taxes, was due to an accounting error from a contractor hired to file state tax payments.

The owner, meanwhile, is blaming the financial error on technical issues by a third-party accountant charged with filing state tax payments.

Documents and warrants from the Colorado Department of Revenue announcing the seizure were taped to the inside of the door of Leven Supply, 300 E. Alameda Ave., on Wednesday. A notice posted Tuesday by tax compliance agent Anna Johnson-Artrup ordered the restaurant’s equipment, furniture and property be put up for auction, though it did not list an auction date or location.

A Colorado Department of Revenue spokesperson, Derek Kuhn, shared the same documents with the Denver Post on Wednesday afternoon.

Leven Supply is the sister restaurant and fine-goods market of Leven Deli Co. in the Golden Triangle. Both delis were founded by Anthony Lygizos, a graduate of the University of Denver.

In a statement Wednesday, Lygizos said, “I want to be very clear on two things: At no point has Leven intentionally avoided paying taxes. And at no point have we not paid our employees.”

He continued: “We’re dealing with an unfortunate situation resulting from a former third-party accounting contractor mishandling Leven Supply’s sales tax filings and payments. That contractor is no longer working with us, and since discovering the issue, we have been actively working with the city and the state to resolve it.”

In the statement, Lygizos said the state would “temporarily close” Leven Supply as the restaurant’s new accountants stepped in.

Two warrants taped below the seizure notice detail a total of $140,345.39 in unpaid taxes. They’re addressed to Leven Supply, LLC, of which Lygizos is the registered agent.

Most of the total is the sum of unpaid sales taxes dating back to January of last year, the month that Leven Supply opened, according to one warrant. The other warrant delineates about $2,300 in withheld income tax on wages.

A post on Leven Supply’s Instagram account said the restaurant was closed “due to unforeseen circumstances” and would reopen “as soon as possible.”

Lygizos is planning his third Leven location on the ground floor of an office tower in downtown Denver. That deli is expected to open sometime this year.

In January, The Denver Post called Leven Supply one of the biggest restaurant openings of 2025.

Women working at Mecca Sports Bar, 2915 W. Mississippi Ave., in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood, routinely offered customers in and outside of the bar sex for money, including undercover police officers, according to a show-cause order from the city.

The Denver Police Department����ap vice and narcotics unit received information from the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Liquor and Tobacco Enforcement Division “about prostitution, unlawful liquor activity, and illicit narcotics sales occurring at the bar,” the order stated.

An order to show cause is a court-ordered directive for a party to appear and explain why a specific, requested action — in this case, the revocation of the Denver bar’s liquor and cabaret licenses — should not be approved.

Mecca Sports Bar did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.

Colorado Department of Revenue officials told Denver police that an anonymous complaint had been made about young girls working at the bar offering men “off-premise bottle service,” according to the order. The girls would leave with the customers, be dropped back off at the bar later in the night and be paid for the night by the bar manager.

The vice unit launched an undercover operation at Mecca Sports Bar, formerly known as Club Dubai, in August 2025, city officials wrote in the show-cause order.

An undercover officer contacted a young woman who walked out of the bar and approached the officer’s vehicle, the order stated. She told him it would cost $300 for “culear” — a common Spanish slang term for “sex,” according to the document.

The officer agreed and the woman got into the car, officials said in the document. When the officer told her it was a sting operation, the woman admitted that she and the other employees would go outside to “engage in prostitution.” She also said they would frequently purchase liquor inside the bar and resell it to customers at a higher price.

Further undercover operations in September and November of 2025 revealed that more women at the bar were engaging in prostitution and overcharging customers for profit, according to the document.

One woman told officers that the Mecca did not explicitly allow prostitution-related work, but she said several employees would ask men to leave first and then follow them outside for sex, police said.

During one of the undercover operations, officers discovered a bar security guard was armed with an airsoft gun. The man had a valid private security license but was not authorized to carry an airsoft gun while on duty, city officials wrote in the show-cause order. That was also cited as a reason to revoke the bar’s licenses.

The order was sent to Mecca’s ownership on Tuesday. Bar officials and their representatives will appear before Denver Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection officials on March 20 for the show-cause hearing.

In-person and online services will be unavailable from Friday to Monday, and Coloradans will have limited access in the following days as offices adjust to an upgraded driver’s license and motor vehicle technology system, according to and officials.

Scheduled appointments at DMV offices will be unavailable after 3 p.m. Friday, according to a . All other services, including online and at express kiosks, will be unavailable after 7 p.m. Friday. Those services include:

• Driver’s licenses. This includes renewing, upgrading and downgrading, according to Colorado officials.
• Business filings. Anyone filing a business document and listing an individual as a registered agent will be unable to do so, according to state officials. Some filers will still be able to select an entity as the registered agent.
• Voter registration. People registering to vote for the first time online will be unable to do so with their Social Security numbers, according to Colorado officials. Individuals will still be able to register using a Colorado Driver’s License Number.
• Car registration. Car owners who want to use myDMV or the e-services platform should register vehicles and renew registrations before Feb. 13 or wait until after the system upgrade is complete, Jefferson County officials said in a .
• Disability placard applications.
• Replacement titles.
• Requesting plates.

“Our DMV offices serve more customers each day than any other county office, so we know how critical 24/7 access to these services is,” Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Amanda Gonzalez said. “Because it����ap such a big upgrade though, there will be several days of downtime, and we need Jeffco drivers to plan ahead.”

The system upgrade will finish on Monday, and all online services are expected to resume by Tuesday, officials said.

Many in-person services will not resume until later in the week as county offices adjust to the new system, Jefferson County officials said.

Residents planning to visit a county location should , as each county will manage its own post-upgrade office availability schedule, according to DMV officials.

Denver DMV locations will remain closed on Tuesday and Wednesday for training on the new system, .

Jefferson County offices will reopen on Wednesday, but will have limited services and appointments available until Friday, according to the county’s release.

Coloradans can expect to see a simpler, faster and more secure system after the upgrade, state officials said in the release. That includes a new customer portal and dashboard, which will allow residents to enroll in electronic communications such as vehicle renewal notifications.

BetMGM agreed to a $50,000 fine although the company will only have to pay half that amount if it avoids any more violations of Colorado sports betting rules for the next two years. The company also agreed to show proof to Colorado that it is properly training its live traders, who establish odds, on the state’s rules and how to set up bets in the Colorado market. The penalty was levied Thursday morning by the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission.

Accepting bets on individual college athletes’ performances in any sporting event is illegal in Colorado. For example, a Colorado sports fan cannot bet on whether a University of Colorado kicker will make a field goal during the third quarter. The same bet would be allowed for the Denver Broncos kicker because it is an NFL game and proposition bets are allowed in professional sports.

BetMGM is the second gaming company to be fined this year for violating the rule on college proposition bets, also known as prop bets.

DraftKing was fined $90,000 in July for accepting improper bets on a college basketball player’s performance in a 2025 NCAA basketball game and for accepting wagers on the 2024 Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing match, which the commission had determined was not a qualified sporting event per Colorado’s betting rules.

The BetMGM wagers were accepted during four college basketball games and one college football game.

The company received eight wagers totaling $346 during two 2023 National Invitation Tournament basketball games, according to a stipulation agreement between the company and Colorado’s gaming commission.

BetMGM also accepted proposition bets on games during the women’s 2024 NCAA basketball tournament, accepting a total of 35 wagers for $443.07, the stipulation agreement stated. Those games were between Iowa and Louisiana State University and the University of Connecticut and the University of Southern California. Those four games featured basketball stars Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins.

Finally, BetMGM accepted $90.71 for five prop bets during an October 2024 football game between University of Nevada Las Vegas and Oregon State University, the stipulation agreement stated.

The stipulation agreement did not specify which athletes’ performances were the focus of any of the proposition bets.

BetMGM reported the improper bets to state regulators, but the three violations led to a penalty, said Christopher Schroder, executive director of the Colorado Division of Gaming.

“By and large, the operators do a good job of avoiding those illegal bets in Colorado, and when they do, they self-report,” he said.

Prop bets have become controversial in the United States after multiple professional athletes have been accused of altering their performances during a game to benefit bettors, who were made aware of their plans to throw bad pitches or miss basketball shots.

In October, the FBI unveiled a massive investigation into rigged betting, accusing Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and five others of an insider sports betting conspiracy, and earlier this month two Cleveland Guardians pitchers were indicted on multiple felonies for agreeing to throw specific pitches during games.

Rules on prop bets vary by state, and now some states are considering outlawing all prop bets to avoid the temptation for athletes to rig games.

The expansion here, part of a push into as many as a dozen cities, for which the California-based company secured $5.6 billion from investors, accelerates the spread of machine-learning technology and may help robotaxis overcome a technical problem: navigating thick, sensor-obscuring snow.

But no government agency in Colorado provides independent regulatory oversight, despite . State lawmakers in 2017 gave tech companies the green light to deploy autonomous vehicles, as long as they obey traffic rules — looser than the regulatory requirements in Arizona and California, the first states where Waymo launched self-driving vehicles. Colorado lawmakers also blocked local governments from banning autonomous vehicles.

Behind the scenes, ethicists and engineers are questioning what they see as a precedent for whether humans keep control.

“I want to see autonomous vehicles be used to help people be more liberated,” robotics engineer Frankie Zhu said last month in a lab where she’s honing vehicle navigation systems for NASA. “I agree with the humans who feel they’re being left behind. It’s a governmental and societal problem.”

State leaders have embraced the rollout in Denver, which will push the number of Waymo driverless taxis in U.S. cities to more than 2,000. Waymo officials say their fleet of a dozen vehicles collecting data in Denver — still with human handlers riding along — will “grow with the number of riders” when paid service begins late next year.

“We welcome Waymo to Colorado,” Gov. Jared Polis said in an emailed response to questions from The Denver Post.

This deployment jibes with state priorities “to help Coloradans get where we want to go faster, safer, with transportation options,” Polis said. “We’re excited that companies are looking to bring promising new technologies like autonomous driving to Colorado that, done right, will improve safety on our streets. Our state is driven by innovation, and the arrival of Waymo’s autonomous vehicle technology in Denver is a step forward.”.

Polis has implementation of a state , calling for a sharper focus on high-risk systems that make “consequential decisions,” and said any policy to protect people against AI discriminatory bias also must support innovation.

He recently that would have banned driverless trucks.

‘You feel trust’

Waymo first deployed its robotaxis, which can be summoned through smartphone apps, in 2020, starting in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, then Atlanta and Austin, Texas. The company now provides more than 1 million paid rides a month.

Beyond Denver, company officials said the expansion in 2026 will include Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and Nashville, Tennessee, and that they are preparing to launch in Seattle, Detroit, Philadelphia and San Diego — as well as London and Tokyo.

A Waymo algorithm based on data drawn from navigating 100 million miles of city streets makes determinations and directly operates the vehicles’ steering, acceleration and braking. Waymo officials say their electric-powered, self-driving cars are much safer than vehicles driven by humans prone to road rage, intoxication and distraction as they look at phones. Waymo’s artificial intelligence system evolves on its own as the rotating sensors extract more and more information.

“You feel trust when you see it. It is being driven by Waymo’s technology,” company spokeswoman Sandy Karp said.

The rollout across metro Denver has been stealthy. Denver transportation officials said they didn’t know the location of Waymo’s depot for charging and storage. (Waymo is using “temporary facilities downtown” before opening “a larger, permanent depot to support our scaled-up operations,” according to the company.)

City and state authorities also were unable to address data privacy — whether the vehicles will gather and share information about riders — as well as whether Waymo surveillance will be tapped for law enforcement use, whether robot-run taxis will have special licenses distinguishing them from vehicles driven by humans, and whether company cybersecurity protocols are sufficient to ensure public safety.

Following a Sept. 16 private reception downtown for journalists and “special guests,” Waymo officials told The Post they could not accommodate interviews and only responded to written questions.

The rollout in Denver began after Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, expressed interest. Waymo officials recognize Denver as one of the nation’s top ride-hailing markets and appreciate “Colorado’s welcoming regulatory environment,” a company statement said. Waymo wants to operate in New York, too, “but first needs state laws to change,” the statement said.

Denver officials “are excited to welcome Waymo” to be part of a future mobility system that manages traffic congestion, said Amy Ford, director of the . Mayor Mike Johnston’s goals envision transit that is environmentally friendly, affordable and shared — to reduce the number of single-occupant vehicles that cause traffic jams, she said.

Ford served previously on a three-member state task force that reviewed applications for testing driverless vehicles that weren’t yet able to comply with state traffic laws. She recalled how, in 2021, task force members supported the French company launch of one of the nation’s first electric, self-driving shuttle systems in Golden around the Colorado School of Mines.

The technology at the time was “shocking and surprising,” showing huge potential, she said, recalling a test run from Loveland to Colorado Springs. Over the past four years, Waymo and other companies demonstrated “a continuum of automation” toward deployment of systems that are “ever-watchful and safe,” she said. “The machine-learning capacity of some of these systems has only grown.”

The self-driving shuttles in Golden flopped. Colorado School of Mines students dubbed the high-profile 10-passenger vehicles “toasters,” said former city manager Jason Slowinski, who now serves as the university’s vice president for infrastructure and operations.

“We ended it” in 2022 after less than a year because the vehicles “didn’t flow very well in traffic,” seldom exceeding 10 mph, creating hazards. Frustrated riders found they could reach their destinations faster by walking, Slowinski said. EasyMile shuttles stalled at roundabouts, lacked the power to carry riders up hills, and caused multiple collisions, he said.

More experimentation will be necessary before handing over transport to robots, Slowinski said.

“It����ap something we’re all struggling with,” he said. “How do we best position AI to help us? At this point, trust but verify — until we have a sense of what this technology is doing and how it is functioning.”

Lawmakers limit local control

Under Colorado , cities and towns cannot prohibit autonomous vehicles or pass regulations that treat them differently from human-driven vehicles.

That law gives “blanket approval” for deploying driverless vehicles statewide, and it practically prevents action by local governments to protect communities, said Kevin Bommer, director of the , who advocates for cities and towns.

Bommer said independent state-level oversight, at least, is crucial “for something this highly technologically dependent.”

“If someone cannot go to City Hall and ask regulators a question, who at the state can they go to?” he said. “…If one of my members came to me and said, ‘Who can I talk to at the state?’ I wouldn’t know where to send them. Who is in charge? It seems like there’s still some work to do. Maybe it ought to get done before these self-driving vehicles go live.

“It sure seems that someone at the state should know what’s going to happen before these vehicles are driving around. What if there’s an accident? What if somebody thinks their identity has been compromised or shared inappropriately? Who do people seek relief from?”

A review of Denver County Court records found no Waymo speeding or traffic obstruction violations over the past two months of testing. Denver police weren’t available to discuss how they’d deal with a driverless vehicle.

officials didn’t respond to questions about licensing. In California, the state Division of Motor Vehicles has since 2019, reporting at least 888. A robotaxi in San Francisco, where Waymo has deployed more than 800 vehicles, last month hit and .

Director Shoshana Lew defended the state’s lack of regulatory oversight as appropriate until self-driving vehicles are established.

“They’re operating in a fairly controlled environment,” Lew said in an interview, acknowledging that the informal task force run by CDOT and the plays only an advisory role. (CDOT’s chief of innovative mobility Kay Kelly, in a recent briefing for state lawmakers, said the task force has identified data privacy, sensor limitations, cybersecurity and regulatory issues as challenges that Waymo is handling. Kelly wasn’t available for an interview.)

The federal government “probably” will address privacy concerns and data-sharing in the future, and self-driving vehicles will fall within the purview of the , Lew said. In Colorado, “ultimately, the and other agencies will work together” to provide oversight, she said.

Machine-learning ‘pervading our lives’

Meanwhile, engineers and ethicists are mulling the implications of replacing human decision-making with progressive machine-learning technology.

“There hasn’t been any public debate in our cities about this,” said civil engineer Amir Behzadan, who serves as a fellow for CU’s , researching applications of artificial intelligence.

“Who is responsible if something goes wrong?” For riders in a Waymo vehicle, the automated system “does not commit to any moral, social or ethical outcome,” Behzadan said.

“When you’re on an exercise treadmill and you feel unsafe, there’s this rope you can pull to shut off the system. I assume, if you’re using any tool or technology that can put your life at risk, there must be a way to opt out. I would advocate having a kill button in those vehicles,” he said.

Waymo ridership will depend on trust, which requires openness and transparency, Behzadan contends.

“When we talk with the salespeople, typically, they’re very much inclined to talk about the positive aspects of their technology,” he said. “A good question to ask is: Can you give me cases of where we cannot rely on the technology?”

At , philosophy professor David Hildebrand has launched a course on artificial intelligence and ethics. The rollout of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles in Denver offers a case study for students who may face a future where human decision-making is replaced by computers.

Among his questions: “Do AVs disproportionately endanger pedestrians, cyclists and children, especially in underserved neighborhoods, even while improving overall safety?” and, “Who has the authority to decide the pre-programmed ethical framework AVs use in unavoidable collision scenarios — manufacturers, local officials, or elected representatives?”

Government employees tasked with oversight in the future may lack the necessary expertise, Hildebrand said.

“Even if officials have access to AV systems and programming, there’s a ‘black box’ nature of machine-learning models, which may mean that AV ‘decisions’ cannot be fully explicable in human-interpretable terms,” he said. “Our usual need is to chase down the cause of a problem. But the very design here may make this technically impossible.”

Driverless transportation in cities already is proving safer than human-driven vehicles, but this is “one of the highest risk machine-learning applications” and “any point of system failure can be catastrophic,” said robotics engineer Zhu in her lab at the Colorado School of Mines.

She and her team loaded 132 tons of white dust, nearly as fine as flour, into a 30-square-foot “lunar surface simulator” for testing autonomous vehicles. They create dust storms and observe how machine-learning sensors respond — the challenge Waymo faces this winter in Denver during snowstorms.

Waymo officials say they’re developing and heaters to keep sensors clear for navigating fog, dust storms and blizzards.

When dust obscures sensors on a self-driving lunar rover, the vehicle abruptly “hits the brakes,” stopping to avoid a collision.

“There can be spontaneous events that confuse the vehicle. Was that a child? Or was that a snowflake? If your sensing is degraded, your ability to make out information about your environment is degraded. Then there are cascading impacts that affect the rest of your autonomous system,” Zhu said.

“It’s very hard to ignore machine learning these days. It is pervading our lives.”