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Federal regulators are playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to put a stop to gambling sites and prediction markets from taking bets on the fate of alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione. However, outside of the United States, many wagers can still be made.
It took just one week following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson for Americans to be able to place bets on Luigi Mangione. Odds were placed on everything from whether Mangione would be extradited to New York from Pennsylvania to whether he acted alone were available to wager on, as well as futures markets related to these outcomes.
According to Bloomberg, Kalshi Inc., a New York-based exchange, was one of those sites that was taking bets on Luigi Mangione. That, however, only lasted two days before it came to an end, as the company told its customers, “after receiving notice from our regulators.”
Those regulators are the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). And according to Bloomberg, the CFTC “bans futures trading linked to crimes including assassination, terrorism and war if the agency decides the so-called events contracts are against the public interest.”
“It’s straight gambling,” said Cantrell Dumas, director of derivatives policy at Better Markets, a financial policy think tank in Washington. “People are betting on whether this person is allegedly responsible for the assassination of another human being, and here we are desensitized to this and betting on whether he’ll enter a guilty plea.”
That isn’t stopping people from wagering on Luigi Mangione though. Exchanges are still available for people located outside of the United States, like crypto-only Polymarket, to make bets on the alleged murderer.
Polymarket claims it has excluded users from the United States from participating since 2022 as part of a $1.4 million settlement with the CFTC. But, according to Gizmodo, a wide variety of bets are still available. Among them are things like whether Luigi Mangione will fire his lawyer before 2025 and whether or not it will be confirmed that he used psychedelics.
Of note, the FBI raided the home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and seized his phone and electronics in November. Also, the CFTC attempted to block Kalshi and PredictIt, an unlicensed exchange, from offering bets on elections, but an appeals court still hasn’t issued its final ruling so the bets are still available.