A new report claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized the phone and electronics of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan on Wednesday. The FBI raid comes just one week after the betting platform successfully predicted that President-elect Donald Trump was going to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
An anonymous source with knowledge of the the FBI raid told The New York Post that the 26-year-old Polymarket CEO woke up to law enforcement officers raiding his apartment in Manhattan at 6 a.m. on Wednesday. During the FBI raid, law enforcement officers reportedly forced Coplan to surrender his phone and other electronics.
A source with knowledge of Wednesday’s FBI raid told Bloomberg that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the betting platform for allegedly allowing individuals in the U.S. to make trades on the platform. According to the outlet, an agreement Polymarket made with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 requires the betting platform to prevent individuals in the United States from making financial transactions on the platform.
The New York Post reported that the FBI raid against Coplan took place a week after the Polymarket CEO announced that the betting platform was planning to return to the United States.
A source told The New York Post that FBI officials did not tell Coplan the reason behind Wednesday’s raid. However, the source described the raid as “grand political theater at its worst,” saying, “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.”
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The anonymous source added, “This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election.”
According to Axios, Polymarket predicted that Trump had a 62.3% chance of winning the 2024 presidential election on Election Day, while Harris only had a 37.9% chance of winning on Election Day.
A Polymarket spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday that Coplan was not arrested during the FBI raid and was not charged with a crime.
“Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections,” the spokesperson told The New York Post. “We charge no fees, take no trading positions, and allow observers from around the world to analyze all market data as a public good.”
Following Wednesday’s FBI raid, Coplan shared a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying, “New phone, who dis?”
