FBI raids NYC home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan

The FBI descended connected the New York City location of Polymarket laminitis and CEO Shayne Coplan aboriginal Wednesday, rousing him from furniture astatine 6 a.m. and demanding his physics devices, according to reports.

The betting website had out-polled the polls to foretell Donald Trump would triumph the statesmanlike election, prompting Coplan, 26, and different crypto bros to decry the raid arsenic politically motivated.

But the site, a alleged prediction marketplace website that fields crypto-funded bets connected the result of satellite events specified arsenic statesmanlike elections, had been nether scrutiny for months, according to reports. The raid was portion of a Justice Department probe into whether Polymarket had been allowing U.S. residents to usage it, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday evening.

Doing truthful would interruption a 2022 colony with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission successful which the tract agreed to halt offering its services to users based successful the U.S. and paid a $1.4 cardinal fine for operating without registration, The New York Times reported.

Polymarket nevertheless called the FBI’s motives into question.

“This is obvious governmental retribution by the outgoing medication against Polymarket for providing a marketplace that correctly called the 2024 statesmanlike election,” the institution told respective media outlets. “Polymarket is simply a afloat transparent prediction marketplace that helps mundane radical amended recognize the events that substance astir to them, including elections.”

In the weeks starring up to the election, Polymarket reported that users had bet $2.7 cardinal connected the result and fixed Trump a 67% accidental of winning, Fortune reported connected Oct. 30. At the aforesaid time, researchers alleged the tract was plagued by lavation trading, a benignant of amerciable marketplace manipulation.

Coplan called the raid the Biden administration’s “last-ditch effort to spell aft companies they deem to beryllium associated with governmental opponents,” helium wrote connected X Wednesday. “We are profoundly committed to being non-partisan, and contiguous is nary different, but the incumbents should bash immoderate self-reflecting and admit that taking a much pro-business, pro-startup attack whitethorn beryllium what would person changed their destiny this election.”

Federal officials declined to remark connected the raid.

Biden has promised and is delivering a peaceful transportation of power, successful stark opposition to what transpired aft Trump mislaid the 2020 election. Trump has sworn retribution against those helium perceives arsenic his political enemies, and seems bent connected filling furniture and different high-level national positions with loyalists poised to transportation retired those plans.