I’ve covered the online gambling industry for nearly 20 years, and I believe Polymarket is possibly the vilest gambling platform that has ever launched in cyberspace. It allowed betting on whether the shooting suspect in the Brown University murders would be caught.
The gambling came as survivors of the horrific mass shooting are still fighting for their lives in hospital beds.
More than $430,000 had been traded on the insidious market as of Dec. 18.
The gambling market allowed users to bet “yes” or “no” by a specific date. Federal, state, and local authorities asked the public for help identifying the suspect. It appeared police needed to rely on the public, not camera footage or physical evidence, to identify the suspected killer. The FBI offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.
Someone with knowledge of the killer’s identity could have gambled in this market. On the market’s comments message board, one user wrote: “The shooter is probably betting on himself not getting caught.” There is no evidence of that, but it’s possible.
Aside from insider betting of some kind, the market could have been attractive to sociopaths rooting against the shooter’s arrest. It could have incentivized people to give police false information to delay the shooter’s arrest.
Only charlatans could argue that there was informational value in the probabilities from this betting market.
Polymarket Continues Atrocious Betting
The Brown University shooting market is par for the course for Polymarket. The wretched company also allows gambling on whether suspected “drug boats” in the Caribbean will be blown up. A growing number of critics, including leaders in other countries, have condemned the strikes as possibly illegal war crimes (i.e., murder).
Polymarket also takes bets on whether there will be a “civil war” in the U.S.
CBS’s 60 Minutes recently aired a puff piece promoting Polymarket’s disgusting gambling product. Numerous deplorable websites in the affiliate marketing space promote Polymarket, and even purportedly independent gaming analysts have been generally friendly to the platform. Polymarket’s value skyrocketed in 2025, up to a reported $12 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Revenue generated from betting on events involving war and death could be considered blood money.
Polymarket has CFTC registration to offer gambling in the U.S., though it had not yet launched its U.S.-facing platform at the time of writing. There are numerous third-party websites promoting how to use a VPN to access Polymarket.
In November, a New York lawmaker filed a bill to address the hideous “predictions market” sector.
Update: Police announced late on Dec. 18 that they found the suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, 48, dead. Because he was found dead and not arrested, Polymarket’s gambling market on an arrest resolved to a “no”.
