Feds crackdown on Luigi Mangione’s betting on gambling sites

You cannot legally invest money in the fate of Luigi Mangione in the United States. Kalshi, one of the only legal prediction markets, pulled all bets on the UnitedHealthcare killer in mid-December, citing concerns 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 match use prediction markets, sites where they can bet on the outcome of events with binary outcomes. Sites like Polymarket, PredicIt and Kalshi exploded in popularity in the past year.

Popular bets on the trend of the site along with the news. Over the past few election months, gamblers have placed huge bets on Trump, Kamala and the future of liberal Western democracy. After Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan, his fate became the subject of fascination in the prediction market.

Unless these markets are scrutinized by US regulators. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has oversight of prediction markets such as Kalshi and PredictIt. On December 13, all bets related to Magione disappeared from the sites. According to BloombergKalshi removed Mangione-related bets from its sites after receiving “notice from … regulators.” The publication said the CFTC “bans futures trading related to crimes, including murder, terrorism and war, if the agency determines that so-called event contracts are against the public interest.”

At Polymarket, all killer bets are included. “Will Luigi Mangione fire his lawyer before 2025?” Polymarket has odds of only 1 percent. “Will it be confirmed that Luigi Mangione used psychedelics?” The users give it a 43 percent chance. “Luigi Mangione Motivated by Rejected Claims?” On December 10, Polymarket had this with a 75 percent chance, but that dropped to about 25 percent.

None of the Mangione-related bets are high volume. At over $400,000, “Is Luigi Mangione’s YouTube channel real?” carries the largest volume. But the viral YouTube channel has been around for a long time debunked as fake. The question of his motivation is at $183k, but every other market has failed to break $100k. Prediction markets take a percentage of bets, and it’s likely that Kalshi and PredictIt won’t lose much money by losing killer bets.

At Polymarket, big political issues and sports betting bring much more money. The fate of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is worth $1 millionthe parliamentary elections in Germany are worth $4 millionand Biden’s eventual pardon of Sam Bankman-Fried is worth it almost $3 million. On Kalshi people have spent nearly $7 million predicting which song will top the US pop charts on Spotify. Mangione just isn’t a hot market.

The CFTC’s move to remove Mangione-related bets from Kalshi is the latest in an ongoing fight against betting sites. It has tried several times to regulate what types of bets people can place on websites like Kalshi and PredictIt. Earlier this year it tried to stop sites do not allow people to bet on elections, sports and ceremonial events such as the Oscars. But the US Court of Appeals set aside the decree in October, just in time for the election.

At Polymarket, the bets are flowing freely, but the leadership is not doing so well with the regulators. In November, the F.B.I broke into the apartment in New York to Polymarket CEO Shane Coplan.