Over the last three months, four accounts on a popular gambling site have placed thousands of bets totalling more than $50 million on Donald Trump winning the US presidential election next week. The bets, placed on prediction platform Polymarket, appear to have skewed the odds massively in Trump’s favour on the site, with the total figure representing roughly 2 per cent of all bets placed on the 2024 elections.
The four accounts – Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro, and Michie – have been traced back to a single French national with “extensive trading experience and [a] financial services background”, according to a statement from Polymarket. The betting platform said there was no evidence that the trader had placed the bets to deliberately boost Trump’s odds, though the incident has proved how easy it is for one wealthy individual to manipulate the market.
