there is no shortage of crazy details about Polymarket. The government alleges that both a special forces soldier and a former Google employee used the prediction market to amass small fortunes through insider trading; CEO Shayne Coplan had his apartment raided by FBI agents, who entered through a battering ram; and one of its executives reportedly paid influencers through his personal PayPal account to promote the company.

But one of Polymarket’s biggest oddities has remained somewhat overlooked: What’s happening with the Panama-based company it created to fulfill an agreement it reached with the federal government? And why, as the WIRED report suggests, do some employees of the Panamanian company appear to have worked from New York?

The prediction market linked to Donald Trump Jr. has an unusually complicated setup. In 2022, federal regulators said it was operating as an unlicensed derivatives exchange, expelled it from the country and prohibited it from serving U.S.-based clients. Before the ban, Adventure One QSS, a corporate entity, was established in Panama, as first reported by Sportico. Adventure One QSS was established overseas to be able to assume operational responsibilities for Polymarket’s flagship platform. A different US-based company, Polymarket US, was established in 2025 and is overseen by an entity called QCX LLC. To this day, Polymarket US is the only Polymarket platform that can legally serve US customers.

Despite this structure, WIRED discovered that Adventure One QSS had staff working outside the U.S. Former Polymarket employees told WIRED that some Adventure One QSS staff have resided in New York, including some who worked from the company’s Manhattan headquarters.

These employees did not travel to Panama, report to anyone in Panama, or interact with colleagues in Panama, because, they say, there were no colleagues there. Instead, they say, Adventure One QSS staff were spread across other countries, including the United States.

The finer points of this structure are important. The 2022 settlement fined Blockratize, a corporate entity associated with Polymarket, $1.4 million and ordered it to “shut down” offering markets that violated the Commodity Exchange Act. The agreement also required the company to stop violating the CEA and other Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules. Former CFTC employees see the location of Adventure One staff as relevant to the deal. “We would have really liked to know that the people who were supposedly in Panama were not actually in Panama,” a former CFTC lawyer told WIRED.

As Sportico reported, Adventure One QSS initially named Panama residents in its incorporation documents in 2021, including Mario Ernesto García de Paredes, a lawyer referred to as the company’s “resident agent.” A woman named Diana Muñoz was listed as president of the company for two months before being replaced by Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who is based in New York. Another man who appears to be based in Panama, Omar Camargo, was listed as secretary. García de Paredes did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment, and Muñoz and Camargo could not be reached to clarify their roles. Muñoz and Camargo appear to have worked together before; They are listed as executives in securities filings related to a company called Internet Art Foundation.

WIRED’s report aligns with previous NPR coverage, which found that the company’s headquarters in a skyscraper in Panama City was empty and that the company had no staff in Panama. In contrast, Adventure One QSS workers in the United States have reportedly been productive and present. A former Polymarket employee said workers in New York who “touched the code,” set up event contracts or otherwise dealt with the offshore platform were all technically working for Adventure One QSS, “but there was no barrier” dividing the corporate branches in practice.