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Polymarket traders earned over $35,000 after temperature anomalies at a Météo France sensor favored their bets, prompting the agency to file a police complaint for interference. One trader reportedly made a $120 bet that yielded a $21,000 payout shortly before the temperature spike.
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6/ Who is this trader?
Did they get lucky and catch a break, or did they know something?
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) April 22, 2026
The payouts were triggered by temperature spikes at a Météo France sensor, which resolved long-shot weather bets in favor of traders.
Météo France filed a police complaint alleging interference with its automated data processing systems due to the temperature anomalies.
The trader, who has a history in weather markets, placed a $120 bet on an 18°C outcome just minutes before the temperature spike, resulting in a 180x return.
The incident highlights vulnerabilities in prediction markets that rely on single data points, raising concerns about market integrity and potential manipulation.

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The incidents expose a structural vulnerability in prediction markets that peg payouts to a single real-world data point. “Basing a contract on the observations of a single weather station probably isn't a good idea,” Mark Roulston, a researcher focused on prediction markets at Lancaster University, told *Decrypt*. “Even in the absence of malicious activity, individual weather stations can develop faults or return anomalous readings,” Roulston said. He noted that national weather centres have “procedures for weeding out anomalous readings” when using station data in their models, saying how basing contracts on an average across multiple stations would make them “less easy to manipulate” and “potentially more useful” for forecasting applications such as energy demand. The April 6 account had been created just two days before the winning bet was placed, *BFMTV* noted, raising questions about whether the platform, already linked to alleged insider trading tied to the Iran war and banned in France, had enabled a malicious actor to manipulate its markets.
The episode is the second market-integrity incident to hit Polymarket in as many weeks. Last week, UFC announcer Bruce Buffer misread a fight result live on air at UFC 327 in Miami, briefly sending one fighter's odds to 99.9% before the error was corrected, enabling a trader to turn $500 into more than $252,000. Prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi are facing mounting scrutiny. Last month, a bipartisan pair of U.S. senators, Adam Schiff (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT), introduced a bill that would ban platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi from offering sports-related wagers altogether. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has thrown its weight behind the platforms, filing lawsuits against Illinois, Arizona, and Connecticut, saying the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over the sector, following actions by the states against the platforms. Polymarket is currently in talks to raise $400 million at a roughly $15 billion valuation, following a $600 million investment from Intercontinental Exchange last month.