France Investigates Temperature Spikes That Led to Big Payouts on Polymar...

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France Investigates Temperature Spikes That Led to Big Payouts on Polymarket

The authorities said a Paris airport weather sensor may have been tampered with as large wagers were placed on the betting site.

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Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, the main airport in Paris.

Credit...

Francois Mori/Associated Press

By

Jonathan Wolfe

and

Ana Castelain

Ana Castelain reported from Paris.

April 24, 2026,

10:48 a.m. ET

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Early in April, Ruben Hallali got an unusual alert on his phone: The evening temperature at Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport had jumped about 6 degrees Fahrenheit in seconds.

Mr. Hallali, the chief executive of the weather risk company Sereno, had set up notifications for extreme weather swings. Then, nine days later, it happened again.

“It was an isolated jump, at one single station, early in the evening,” said Mr. Hallali, who added that he noticed another strange coincidence about the spikes: The timing was just right for somebody to reap a windfall on the betting site Polymarket.

He wasn’t the only one who sensed a problem. Météo-France, the country’s national meteorological service, filed a complaint last week with the police and local prosecutors, saying it had evidence that a weather sensor at Charles de Gaulle, the country’s largest airport, may have been tampered with.

The temperature swings, experts said, coincided with a period of unusual activity on Polymarket, one of the leading online prediction markets, which allow users to wager on the outcome of virtually anything.

One increasingly popular area is weather betting, where speculators can make real-time wagers on temperature readings, rainfall totals, the number of Atlantic hurricanes in a year and much more — with payouts in the thousands of dollars and higher.

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