A Money Trail From Polymarket to a French App

Groupe Amaury said in a statement on Saturday that a complaint is being filed over the suspect bets, citing “allegations of leaks of the results and potentially fraudulent bets” and adding that “investigations are underway to verify the facts and determine any responsibility.” Belgian daily La Dernière Heure reported, in a story republished by La Libre, that the complaint was due to be filed on Monday morning and that France Football has called in the police and opened an internal inquiry. No prosecutor has publicly confirmed a complaint or an investigation, and Polymarket has not publicly addressed the bets.

Upside first flagged the bets on Oct. 23, three days before Harry Kane was named the winner in London. It identified 12 Polymarket accounts, created between Oct. 1 and Oct. 20, that staked $264,000 on Ballon d’Or markets, backing the same order: Kane first, then Kylian Mbappé, followed by Lamine Yamal, Rodri, and Lionel Messi. Seven of the accounts bet on nothing else, and six placed their first bets within 15 minutes of being created. The bets returned close to $200,000 in winnings. Hours before the ceremony, the official Ballon d’Or website published three pre-written articles hailing Kane, Mbappé, and Yamal each as the winner, which organizers said had been prepared in advance for all nominees and did not reveal the podium.

In a follow-up on Oct. 29, Upside traced about $309,000 deposited by the 12 accounts and about $500,000 withdrawn after the results were announced. The first withdrawal came 19 minutes after the rankings went public, and $374,000 had left the platform within three hours. Upside split the accounts into three groups based on their money transfers but found no transfers between the groups, so it could not say whether one person or several were behind them.

The account with the clearest trail, kraben006, since renamed Edgarblade, was the only one of the 12 to bet on all five places, starting with Kane on Oct. 1. Upside said the wallet’s first funds, about $250, arrived in January from an address belonging to Deblock, a French financial app that can trace the sender but discloses customer identities only to authorities. Several other accounts were funded from platforms that verify users’ identities, including Binance, Kraken, KuCoin, and Revolut.

Being right does not prove a leak on its own. Upside noted that each of the five places traded at around 60% on ceremony day, making the result the market favorite by then, and said the 12 accounts stand out mainly for betting large sums from Oct. 1 through unusual funding routes. Jury voting closed on Sept. 28, three days before the first of the accounts was created.

A separate Upside report on Oct. 31 found an older account, Kallipso, that backed the winner three years in a row: Rodri in 2024, bought at 7 cents, Ousmane Dembélé in 2025, and Kane in 2026, for close to $50,000 in total winnings. Its first Kane purchase came at 11:59 p.m. Paris time on Sept. 28, one minute before jury voting closed. Upside found no money link between Kallipso and the 12 accounts, and said nothing proves it had confidential information.

France’s national gaming regulator ordered internet providers to cut off access to Polymarket in July, though it is not known where the bettors were located. Since March, Polymarket’s own rules have barred trading on confidential information obtained in breach of a duty of trust. Insider cases on the platform have already reached court elsewhere, with U.S. authorities charging an Army soldier accused of betting on the Maduro raid using classified information.

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