Polymarket Is Being Used for Massive Money Laundering
"In the regulated space, this kind of thing does not happen." The post Polymarket Is Being Used for Massive Money Laundering appeared first on Futurism .
Prediction markets, once dominated by gambling addicts, are now being exploited by financial criminals for massive money laundering activities, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. The phenomenon was first identified in February when Polymarket, a popular prediction market platform, noticed a significant surge in bets made with stolen debit cards.
Fraudsters would use stolen financial information to place wagers on the market. If they won, they would withdraw the funds and transfer them to alternative payment methods under their control. The financial damage could have been catastrophic, with criminals attempting to steal at least $10 million using this method. This led to third-party payment processors rejecting over 80 percent of incoming transactions as fraudulent, a rate far exceeding the usual industry norm of around 1 percent.
Polymarket's CEO, Shayne Coplan, allegedly instructed his compliance team to continue processing the cash despite the alarming fraud levels, expressing little concern about future consequences. Financial policy experts have described the level of corruption uncovered as unprecedented, noting that such acts are unheard of in regulated industries.
Joe Konizeski, a former attorney for the Commodity Future Trading Commission, emphasized that "in the regulated space, this kind of thing does not happen."
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