FBI Raids NYC Home of Betting Firm's CEO

Shayne Coplan calls development 'discouraging' after Polymarket correctly predicted a Trump win
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 14, 2024 7:31 AM CST
FBI Raids NYC Home of Betting Firm's CEO
The FBI seal is seen in Omaha, Nebraska, on Aug. 10, 2022.   (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

Polymarket, the betting market that drew attention by correctly predicting a win by Donald Trump in the 2024 election, is now earning new headlines for a stickier reason. The New York Post reports that early Wednesday, the FBI raided the Manhattan residence of CEO Shayne Coplan, with a source telling the paper that agents seized the 26-year-old's phone and other electronic devices. A Polymarket rep said later that evening that Coplan wasn't arrested and hadn't been charged, but a source tells Bloomberg that Polymarket is the subject of a Justice Department investigation for allegedly accepting trades from Americans (bettors in the US haven't been permitted to use Polymarket after trading here was paused in 2022).

The Wall Street Journal notes it's not yet been spelled out what prompted the raid, but the Post's source calls it "obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election." Coplan himself joked about the raid at first, with a "new phone, who dis?" tweet on Wednesday afternoon, but he quickly got more serious in a follow-up post. "It's discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents," he wrote. "We are deeply committed to being non-partisan, and today is no different."

Polymarket has been slammed by critics for possibly "manipulating the underlying market by skewing public perception in Trump's favor," per Bloomberg. The Post's source, however, claims the raid was "grand political theater at its worst," noting that law enforcement "could have asked [Coplan's] 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." Officials are pushing back on that narrative. "The FBI carried out a court-authorized law enforcement activity," a federal source tells Axios. (More Polymarket stories.)

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