A pretty common saying when it comes to gambling is "the house always wins." But, more modern betting markets that aim to allow anything to be bettable might be shaking that tagline up a little. While any normal gambler is essentially betting on things you have no control over, sometimes, if you think outside the box, you can control things...
According to MSN, a man allegedly "altered" the temperature at a Paris airport in order to win a bet about the Parisian temperature numbers that day. Normally, that sounds like a pretty impossible feat... but the whole structure of the betting site falls apart when the whole thing is tied to a singular temperature sensor in an airport. Possibly the strangest part about this whole thing is that Polymarket even lets you bet on Parisian temperatures!
And the funniest part? He altered it twice! Meteorologists saw that the Charles de Gaulle Airport's temperature was strangely spiking. The temperature hit around 10 degrees above its usual, on two occasions.
It first happened on April 6, with an unknown better pocketing $14,000. The second time it happened, the better would pocket over $21,000.
A trader under the name of "xX25Xx" was responsible for placing the strange bets. France's national meteorological associatin, Meteo France, has filed an official complaint over the situation. They said the complaint regarded the "tampering of an automated data processing system."
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Local Outlets Have Said the Gambler Could Have Used a Hair Dryer
It really does sound like something out of a film, right? But local outlets have genuinely suggested a hair dryer was used in the strange "heist".
According to MSN, Polymarket Discord channels have been filled with discourse about the strange event. They've been sharing AI-generated pictures of Parisian hairdryers, and asking each other questions about it. One gambler asked another, "What did you do to the temperature sensor at Paris airport yesterday? Was your weapon of choice a hairdryer or a lighter?"
In any case, one thing remains true - maybe these things should be a little more secure if tens of thousands of dollars are in the mix.
