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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has opened at least three previously unreported investigations into suspected insider trading on Polymarket, according to a WIRED report.
Chairman Michael Selig approved the first investigation in early May, targeting pardon-related markets. It followed an NPR report that a trader earned more than $300,000 after correctly predicting several preemptive pardons. A second investigation, approved at the end of May, covers Iran-related contracts. That one followed a 60 Minutes report on accounts that reportedly earned $2.4 million with a 98% win rate.
In July, the CFTC approved a third investigation into suspected insider trading involving Google’s 2025 Year in Search ranking. An agency official said that probe would examine additional individuals and that the Southern District of New York is running a parallel investigation. CFTC enforcement officials said the Google matter is separate from an existing case against former Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo, who allegedly made more than $1.2 million trading Polymarket contracts on confidential information about the rankings.
Probes land on a young US operation
Polymarket, a prediction market where users trade event contracts on real-world outcomes, only relaunched in the United States in late 2025. The relaunch followed its acquisition of QCEX and put its event contracts under CFTC oversight. The new investigations test that arrangement before it is a year old.
Previously, the Justice Department and the CFTC examined whether Polymarket circumvented restrictions on US traders imposed under a 2022 settlement, a probe that ended in July. Polymarket itself is not reported to face exposure in the new insider-trading probes, and no outcome in any of the three has been announced.
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