Polymarket investigates suspicious bets placed hours before NYT/Siena polls

Vanderbilt researchers flagged a trader who made more than $257,000 on Senate race bets placed shortly before major polls went public Someone appears to have been very good at guessing what a poll would say before anyone else could read it. Polymarket says it has identified a series of well-timed trades placed shortly before two New York Times/Siena College polls were made public. The company has opened an internal investigation. The trades were flagged by researchers at Vanderbilt University, whose findings were reported by the New York Times. The pattern includes a bet of approximately $191,277 on Nebraska Republican Senator Pete Ricketts winning re-election. It was placed on October 31, 2026. A poll released soon after showed Ricketts ahead by six points, and the trader pocketed more than $77,000. A $2 million deposit and two lucky calls The sequence of events is what caught the researchers’ attention. On October 30, around 5:30 p.m. ET, more than $2 million landed in an anonymous crypto wallet. The account then started placing sizable bets on Polymarket. According to the Vanderbilt research, roughly $191,000 of that went toward Ricketts holding his Senate seat. Before the poll ...