The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating three firms over suspicious oil futures trades placed shortly before President Donald Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with Iran on 7 April. Traders spent $950 million betting that oil prices would fall, just hours before Trump's announcement triggered a sell-off.
The probe follows a complaint from consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which flagged unusual trading patterns on prediction platform Polymarket and in oil futures markets. The complaint cites a single anonymous user, “Magamyman,” who made over $553,000 betting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “removed” from power moments before his assassination by Israeli forces on 27 February.
On the night of 27 February, about 150 accounts on Polymarket placed bets totaling $855,000 that the US would strike Iran the next day. Sixteen accounts each pocketed more than $100,000. A crypto-analytics firm identified six “suspected insiders” who made a total of $1.2 million on Polymarket after Khamenei was killed.
Similar surges occurred on 23 March, when traders placed $580 million in oil futures bets just 15 minutes before Trump said the US was having “productive” talks with Iran, causing oil prices to plummet. Experts say the timing and scale of these trades warrant investigation, though it remains unclear whether any laws were broken.
“We can’t say from the outset whether any of these trades were illegal,” said Andrew Verstein, a law professor at UCLA. “But many of them bear the hallmarks of suspicious trades that would naturally warrant investigation.” The CFTC has not commented on the status of its investigation.
