- One respondent is named in Thursday’s Manhattan filing: QCX LLC, the entity trading as Polymarket US, with James’s office bringing the case.
- The count list runs to eight: the state constitution’s bookmaking ban, three Penal Law sections, three under the Racing Law, and the Wire Act.
- The penalties sought run to triple Polymarket’s gains, with a separate $100,000 penalty on each unlicensed sports-wagering offer aimed at New Yorkers.
- The petition never mentions the federal exchange license Polymarket cites in its own countersuit against New York.
NEW YORK – New York asked a Manhattan judge Thursday to shut Polymarket’s U.S. arm out of the state as an unlicensed bookmaker, in a petition from Attorney General Letitia James that puts a $100,000 price on every sports-wagering offer the platform made with no state license and demands a penalty of triple its gains.
A Bookmaking Case, Not a Jurisdiction Fight
The 33-page petition, announced jointly by James and Gov. Kathy Hochul, went to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, the trial court that sits in Manhattan, and names one respondent, QCX LLC, the operating entity behind Polymarket US.
QCX is the exchange Polymarket announced it had bought in July 2025 for $112 million, a deal the company said it made because QCX already carried a designated-contract-market registration from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal status Polymarket has cited elsewhere to argue that state gambling statutes cannot reach its contracts.
New York’s petition never engages that argument. It does not use the word “CFTC” or “preempt” anywhere in the filing, proceeding instead as though the federal registration does not exist. “Nobody is above the law in our state,” Hochul said in a joint statement announcing the suit with James.
Eight Counts Under One Statute
Every count in the petition rests on Executive Law Section 63(12), the “repeated and persistent illegality” statute. The same statute carried the office’s July action against Kalshi, which competes with Polymarket for the same contracts.
The constitution’s ban on “book-making” in Article I, Section 9 anchors the first count. Three Penal Law counts follow, for advancing gambling activity, accepting wagers and possessing wagering records, then three counts under the Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law for unlicensed and unauthorized mobile sports wagering, and a final count under the Wire Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 1084(a).
The Penal Law’s bookmaking threshold, receiving more than five bets totaling more than $5,000 in a single day, predates online prediction markets by decades. The petition says a bettor with a New York-based account cleared it on Aug. 27 alone, and it cites reports valuing the business at more than $20 billion, with annualized revenue well over $1 billion since the U.S. platform went live Dec. 3, 2025.
The money James wants comes in layers. First an accounting of every bet taken from New York customers, then restitution for those customers and disgorgement of what the platform kept, then a Penal Law Section 80.10 penalty of triple the gain from the alleged conduct. On top of that sits Racing Law Section 1367(16)(a), which lets the court charge $100,000 every time the platform offered, or tried to offer, sports wagering it had no authorization for, a per-instance figure the petition never totals.
A Bet No Licensed New York Book Could Take
The petition’s factual section goes beyond a generic wagering claim. It says Polymarket’s own member agreement lets accountholders as young as 18 open accounts and trade, three years under the 21-and-over floor New York’s Racing Law sets for mobile sports wagering.
It also lists a Sept. 3 football contract between the University at Albany and the University at Buffalo among the New York college games it says Polymarket let bettors wager on, a matchup no operator licensed for legal sports betting in New York could take, because state law defines any event involving a New York college team as a prohibited sports event regardless of where it is played.
What Comes Next
Polymarket did not wait to answer in the same court. Later Thursday, the company filed a notice removing the case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and lodged a federal complaint of its own that names James and the New York State Gaming Commission as defendants. That complaint casts its event contracts as swaps, which it says federal commodity law places under the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.
“We’ll fight for our users,” Neal Kumar, Polymarket’s chief legal officer, said, adding that the company is staying in New York.
New York’s fight with prediction markets traces back to Gaming Commission cease-and-desist notices that drew Kalshi’s suit against the commission in October 2025, and the state’s petition against Polymarket is the second James has filed against an operator since then.
Polymarket, like Kalshi, is one of several prediction market apps pressing the same federal argument in courts around the country. Thursday’s removal notice means a federal judge, not the state court James chose, is the first to take up her petition.
