Polymarket apologizes, takes down wager on US pilot’s rescue
Polymarket apologized and said it took down a market letting users bet on when a U.S. crew member on a plane taken down in Iran would be rescued. That crew member has since been found and is safe, but wounded, President Donald Trump said Sunday.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., criticized the company for the wager, which he screenshot and posted on X Friday, before the man was located.
“They could be your neighbor, a friend, a family member. And people are betting on whether or not they’ll be saved. This is DISGUSTING,” Moulton said.
Moulton added that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., invests in Polymarket, which he called a “dystopian death market,” highlighting concerns that people with private intelligence could use it to take advantage of these wagers. Polymarket and another one of these platforms, Kalshi, have both said they are putting out new restrictions on insider trading.
Polymarket responded to Moulton by saying they took the market down “immediately as it does not meet our integrity standards.”
“It should not have been posted, and we are investigating how this slipped through our internal safeguards,” Polymarket said.
Still, Moulton noted that there were still bets on the website on if the U.S. would invade Iran, and when the war would end.
“Your integrity standards are severely lacking,” he said in a quote-tweet of Polymarket’s post. In a subsequent tweet, Moulton wrote: “Taking down this particular bet after I called it out can only be the first step, @Polymarket. There are still 219 war bets active on your platform. Remove these immediately.”
Moulton recently instituted a policy in his office banning his congressional staff from participating in prediction market platforms.
This isn’t the first time Polymarket has been called out by legislators.
Rep. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., introduced the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 when a Polymarket account turned thousands of dollars in wagers on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ouster following his capture by U.S. forces.
Torres’ bill would make it illegal for federal elected officials, political appointees, executive branch employees and congressional staff to knowingly engage in a transaction about government affairs or policy outcome if they have nonpublic information about it, or could “reasonably obtain it” while performing their official duties.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
