- A Polymarket user made over $550,000 by purchasing contracts regarding the US and Israel bombing Iraq hours before the news was made public.
- Many people and organizations believe that the contract was purchased by someone with insider information. Those people and organizations now are calling for a ban on political contracts on all prediction markets.
NEW YORK – Polymarket is under fire after an anonymous user earned over $550,000 from a contract based on the bombings in Iran and its now deceased Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Polymarket, which is one of the largest prediction market apps on the market, offers many contracts that allow users to essentially bet on the outcome of a specific event. Those events are often political, which could potentially lead to people with inside information placing bets on something that they know is going to happen.
That is one of the key issues that has now led Israeli police to open an investigation into the user who won $550,000+ by predicting when Iran would be bombed.
The Polymarket user who successfully predicted the bombing has the username Magamyman on the site.
Magamyman has made other suspicious trades on Polymarket before, too. In 2024, Magamyman successfully predicted that on October 26, Israeli forces would attack Iran.
The Israeli police are not the only lawmakers that Polymarket, and Magamyman, have drawn ire from.
Chris Murphy, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, has now introduced a bill that proposes banning trades on prediction market platforms that are based on government actions.
Last Friday, a handful of people made big, unusual $100,000+ bets on Polymarket – that the U.S. would strike Iran the next day.
The Iran War is fueling a new kind of corruption: White House officials secretly profiting off war.
It’s disgusting. We need to ban it. pic.twitter.com/qs0aEzqemD
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 4, 2026
Prediction markets are governed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US, which is different from legal sports betting sites that are regulated at the state level. Due to that distinction, prediction markets can still offer political contracts, while political odds are banned at state-regulated sportsbooks across the country.
It remains to be seen if the CFTC will restrict the types of political odds at Polymarket and other prediction markets, or if a bill like Senator Murphy’s is necessary to prevent users from profiting on insider information.
