By Michelle Conlin

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal law enforcement agents raided the downtown New York home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan on Wednesday, seizing his phone and electronics, the company confirmed.

The early-morning raid on Coplan’s SoHo apartment followed last week’s presidential election, in which bettors on Polymarket, an offshore crypto-fueled electoral gambling site, had for weeks placed Donald Trump’s odds drastically higher than those of Vice President Kamala Harris. divergence from opinion polls.

Coplan, the 26-year-old founder of Polymarket, was roused from his bed at 6 a.m. by FBI agents demanding he hand over his electronic devices, the New York Post first reported.

“This is an obvious political vendetta by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a marketplace that correctly called the 2024 presidential election,” a Polymarket spokesman said.

The company told Reuters that Coplan had not been arrested or taken into custody.

The FBI declined to comment. The Justice Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on the raid.

In the run-up to the presidential election, the site gained widespread attention for the way it placed Trump’s chances far ahead of Harris’s, when opinion polls had shown the race in a heat for months.

Polymarket, which does not allow trading in the US, also gained control after a mystery French trader placed big bets on Trump winning the election.

The Polymarket trader’s huge bets came in tandem with a dramatic increase in Trump’s chances on the stock markets.

He left with a profit of more than 46 million dollars.

Last week, France’s gambling regulator said it was examining whether Polymarket was complying with French laws.

(Reporting by Michelle Conlin in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Stephen Coates)