Polymarket Reviews Suspicious Bets on the Israeli Election

Polymarket is investigating whether insider information was used to trade in markets built around the October 27 Israeli election and Netanyahu's position in it. The platform has not made an official statement, but it has confirmed the investigation.

Polysights and Bubblemaps identified hundreds of new accounts that deposited funds on the blockchain for the first time shortly before polls closed. Many of these accounts were opened about an hour before polls closed at 22:00 local time. These accounts made well-timed trades, and some of them together earned more than $100,000 in profit.

Bets on Netanyahu rose quickly after exit polls showed Likud winning more seats than expected. One trader deposited $14,000 twelve minutes before polls closed and later sold the bet for $42,000, after the market shifted in response to the polls. Polysights reported that the new wallets held potential payouts of about $700,000 in favor of Netanyahu.

The report says exit polling firms, election officials and party staff could have access to insider information. A similar case has also come up in the United States. In April, the US Department of Justice charged Special Forces Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke with using classified military information about the removal of Maduro to trade on Polymarket.

In May, federal prosecutors charged a Google security engineer with making more than $1 million in unlawful gains by using insider information in prediction markets related to Google.