Feds Crack Down on Luigi Mangione’s Gambling on Gambling Sites

You can’t legally bet on Luigi Mangione in the US. Kalshi, one of the only legal prediction markets, pulled all bets on the UnitedHealthcare conspiracy in mid-December, citing problems from federal regulators.

From sports betting to Counter-Strike skins, gambling is having a “moment” in America. Gamblers who want to bet on something other than the outcome of a football game use prediction markets and sites where they can bet on the outcomes of events with binary outcomes. Sites like Polymarket, PredicIt and Kalshi exploded in popularity during the past year.

Popular bets on the site trend along with news. In the last few months of the election, gamblers have placed big bets on Trump, Kamala and the future of liberal Western democracy. The fate of Luigi Mangione has become the subject of fascination in the prediction market after he allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan.

Unless these markets are audited by US regulators. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversees prediction markets such as Kalshi and PredictIt. On December 13, all bets related to Magione were removed from the sites. According to BloombergKalshi removed Mangione-related bets from their site after receiving “…a notice from regulators.” The publication writes that the CFTC “prohibits futures trading related to crimes, including conspiracy, terrorism and war, if the agency determines that so-called event contracts are against the public interest.”

All bets on the assassin are active at Polymarket. “Will Luigi Mangione Fire His Lawyer By 2025?” Polymarket is likely only 1 percent. “Will Luigi Mangione be confirmed as using psychedelics?” Users Give it a 43 percent chance. “Luigi Mangione Motivated by Denied Claims?” On December 10, Polymarket had a 75 percent chance of this, but this decreased to about 25 percent.

None of the bets involving Mangione are high volume. Over $400,000, “Is the Luigi Mangione YouTube Channel Real?” carried the most volume. But the viral YouTube channel has been around for a long time exposed as fake. The question of his motivation is $183k, but all other markets failed to break $100k. Prediction markets take a percentage of bets, and it’s likely that Kalshi and PredictIt aren’t losing a lot of money by losing killer bets.

Big political questions and sports bets move more money on Polymarket. Such is the fate of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol It is worth 1 million dollarsGerman parliamentary elections It is worth 4 million dollarsand worth a possible Biden pardon of Sam Bankman-Fried about $3 million. People spent in Kalshi about $7 million Predicting which song will top the US pop charts on Spotify. Mangione isn’t just a hot market.

The CFTC’s move to remove Mangione-related bets from Kalshi is the latest in its ongoing fight against prediction sites. There have been several attempts to regulate what bets people can place on websites such as Kalshi and PredictIt. Earlier this year he tried to stop sites that allow people to bet on elections, sports and ceremonies like the Oscars. But the US appeals court annulled the sentence In October, just in time for the election.

Bets flow freely in Polymarket, but the management is not very successful with the regulators. In November, the FBI He raided an apartment in New York Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan.