150-Plus Polymarket Accounts Flagged as Betting With ‘Sensitive National Security Information,’ CNN Reports

CNN senior reporter Marshall Cohen joined anchor Wolf Blitzer on Friday to discuss new findings that some 150 Polymarket accounts appear to be U.S. military insiders, some with apparent access to sensitive military information.

Blitzer began the segment, “Happening now, a new report is raising serious alarm bells over findings that suggest U.S. military insiders potentially use privileged information to place bets on Polymarket and could be exposing very sensitive national security information publicly. The report found there’s roughly 150 so-called wallets that place bets in military markets and win nearly every time. Joining us now is senior reporter Marshall Cohen. Marshall, what are we learning?”

“Well, this insider trading stuff just keeps coming up, doesn’t it? So just to give you the context here, war markets are illegal in the U.S. All those trades that you mentioned actually occurred on Polymarket’s international site, and that’s important because that site runs on blockchain,” Cohen reported, adding:

So all the trades are actually public and trackable, but it doesn’t tell us who is doing the trading, which is important. But the data is still valuable, and the folks at the non-partisan Anti-Corruption Data Collective did a deep dive. They identified more than 150 accounts that showed signs of potential insider trading on war markets, including markets about Iran.

They said many of these accounts placed huge long-shot bets and had a stunning win rate of 97 percent. And you can see on your screen that they profited more than $8 million. Now, to be clear, Polymarket is not accused of any wrongdoing here. I actually spoke with a senior Polymarket official about these findings. They said they had already referred dozens of those accounts to the Justice Department and that criminal investigations are underway. Now, CNN has also reached out to the DOJ for comment on that.

Polymarket, meanwhile, says that it is investing heavily in the surveillance tools needed to prevent insider trading. The company’s founder and CEO, Shayne Coplan, actually brought that up yesterday at an event with federal regulators here in D.C. Listen to what he said

CNN then cut to a clip of Coplan, saying, “We have someone here right now who is ex-FBI, who works full-time at Polymarket, has built custom, proprietary surveillance software on-chain. I know this is livestreamed, people are gonna be upset to hear that, but, you know, we talked with our partners, Palantir, Chainalysis, and they’re like, ‘Damn, you guys have this in-house?’ It’s serious, you know, and we’re grateful to have that. We can continue to invest more in it.”

Cohen concluded, “Well, just looking at the big picture here, situations like these are exactly why so many policymakers are alarmed about these prediction markets. A bipartisan coalition of 44 state attorneys general is pushing hard for more regulation, and there’s more and more Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill who also want reforms in this industry.”

Watch above via CNN.

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