Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan had his phone and electronics seized by the FBI early Wednesday morning. This comes after the election-betting platform had correctly predicted a Trump win in the presidential election.
A source close to the matter told the New York Post at around 6 am in his Soho home, Coplan was woken by law enforcement who demanded he hand over his phone and electronics. Coplan was not arrested.
The source said it’s "grand political theater at its worst," adding that "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons."
Coplan was reportedly not given a reason for the seizures. The source said that "This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election."
A spokesperson for the company told the Post in a statement, "Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections. We charge no fees, take no trading positions, and allow observers from around the world to analyze all market data as a public good."
On Election Day, Polymarket had Trump's chances of winning the election at 62.3 percent, compared to Vice President Kamala Harris' 37.9 percent, per Axios.
In July, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is responsible for regulating financial derivatives under the Biden-Harris administration, took steps to ban election-betting sites. Rostin Behnam, the chairman of the CFTC, pursued rules at the time to outlaw election betting, arguing that the agency is not equipped to monitor political markets for fraud or manipulation.
