A Polymarket user who says he accurately wagered that President Donald Trump would utter “Khamenei” in March has taken the prediction market platform to court, seeking $170,000 after the site ruled that Trump never said the word.
The dispute stems from one of Polymarket’s recurring political betting markets, “What will Trump say this week?” Weeks after the Iran conflict began on Feb. 28, the platform asked users to predict whether Trump would say either “Khamenei” or “Ayatollah” during the week of March 15.
Jesús Manuel Gonzalez Hernandez says he spent $300 to purchase 170,000 “yes” shares. If the market had been settled in his favor, the wager would have produced a $170,000 payout.
In the lawsuit, Gonzalez Hernandez claims Trump did, in fact, say “Khamenei” twice while speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One that week. His legal team cites both official White House transcripts and video footage of the exchange as evidence.
“They showed about 250,000 people in the square, saying how much they love Khamenei,” Trump appears to tell reporters in the video cited in the complaint.
Polymarket, however, determined that Trump had not said the required word, settled the prediction market as “no” and declined to pay Gonzalez Hernandez.
According to the complaint, Polymarket later argued that Trump had mispronounced the name and was actually referring to Ruhollah Khomeini, the former Iranian leader who died in 1989.
Gonzalez Hernandez’s attorneys counter that the market rules never required perfect pronunciation, nor did they specify that Trump had to be referring to any particular figure named Khamenei.
They also called Polymarket’s claim that Trump was speaking about Khomeini implausible.
“Khomeini had been dead for nearly 37 years,” the suit says. “The President was talking about a live war with a living adversary. To hear a reference to a man dead since 1989, one has to be looking for a reason not to pay.”
Lawyers allege that Polymarket’s “no” judgement was due to either failed technology or that it was overridden by the operator.
“Our client’s case is about being treated unfairly by a multi-billion dollar company. He trusted Polymarket, played by its written rules, and was wronged,” Max Burwick, Gonzalez Hernandez’s lawyer, said in a statement to The Post.
Polymarket declined to comment on the lawsuit. CEO Shayne Coplan and CMO Matthew Modabber were also named in the lawsuit but could not be reached for comment.
