For nearly three weeks, a real bet a person could place on the Polymarket gambling app was on "Any of the Cornell 7 charged with a felony sex crime?" The Cornell 7 refers to seven defendants in a civil lawsuit filed last month by a former Cornell University student, saying she was gang-raped by several fraternity members.
No criminal charges have been filed, but after the lawsuit drew national attention, a local prosecutor said on Sept. 28 that his office would reopen the criminal investigation. Two days later, on Sept. 30, a market opened up on the popular gambling platform (though technically it is a "prediction market") to bet on the results of the investigation. The market was not available to bettors in the United States version of the app, but the bet itself was very easy to find. I just punched "Cornell 7" into the search bar and found it pretty easily.
Polymarket, at first, said nothing about this. A quick search on Instagram shows a lot of people and organizations were talking about this for days—at times even tagging Polymarket in their posts—but the global company with an estimated $1 billion in annualized revenue said nothing. When Front Office Sports wrote about the bet on Monday and reached out for comment, the online gambling platform gave that publication the following, largely meaningless, statement:
Markets bring better, unbiased information about important events, in contrast to the disinformation we’re all drowning in, which too often leaves the public misled and disillusioned to the point of apathy. This case, and sexual assault on college campuses more broadly, are deeply important issues, and markets bring objective, data-driven insight into how a matter like this is moving through the legal system, on a topic that deserves far more transparency and honest attention.
But something changed between when FOS first published its story and when I reached out for comment myself a few hours later. By then, the bet had been removed from the website. Refreshing the link got me a page that was mostly blank, but for the phrase "this event has been archived," along with an image of a crystal ball. Another bet that had popped up in the bottom right corner of the Cornell bet—"Clavicular convicted of rape?"—also had disappeared (Clavicular is an online influencer charged with rape in Massachusetts.)
I emailed Polymarket for comment on both the Cornell and Clavicular bets. This reply was far shorter: "Thanks for reaching out. Polymarket is going to respectfully decline comment at this time."
My last screenshot showed $451,633 in the market, which was scheduled to close at the end of January.
From what's publicly available, there's no indication that Polymarket would have taken down the bet if not for the potent combination of negative attention and reporters reaching out for comment. But that doesn't mean plenty of criminal cases aren't still there to bet upon. For bettors outside the U.S., "Will Lindsay Clancy be convicted of manslaughter?", "Will Luigi Mangione will go to trial before 2027?", and "Clavicular sentenced to prison by ... ?" were, as of Tuesday afternoon, all still taking bets.
