Nigel Farage aide loses whopping £400k by betting the US wouldn’t bomb Iran
The US launched air strikes on Iran on February 28, wiping out the country’s missile infrastructure, military sites and leadership… and also a whopping stake placed by a key ally of Nigel Farage
George Cottrell pictured with Nigel Farage in 2019(Image: Alamy Stock Photo)
A key Nigel Farage aide has lost a whopping £400,000 by betting that Donald Trump not bomb Iran by the end of February.
Convicted fraudster George Cottrell, 32, placed the wager on the Polymarket trading platform, which allows users to place “yes or no” bets on topics such as politics or the weather.
Cottrell, a businessman and self-confessed high-stakes gambler dubbed “Posh George”, is said to lumped the huge sum on a “no” bet on the question “US strikes Iran by February 28, 2026?”. He is said to have backed his belief to the tune of $550,000, around £411,000.
But his stake was wiped out when the US struck the Middle Eastern country on February 28, according to Polymarket data. Cottrell also made several other wagers on the date of the Iran strikes, which also left him out of pocket.
As well as his Iran bet, Cottrell also appears to have lost an estimated $125,000 (£94,000) on bets that Sir Keir Starmer would be out of office by Feb 28.
The financier is a close ally of Reform UK leader Farage and previously helped raise millions of pounds for his previous parties, Ukip and the Brexit Party.
He has been a frequent aide during Farage’s political campaigns and was pictured alongside him when he was famously doused in milkshake during a visit to Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.
Cottrell was born to an aristocratic family and brought up in Mustique, an exclusive 2,470-acre private island in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where royals like Princess Margaret and celebs like Mick Jagger have been known to hangout.
His mother is a former model and one-time girlfriend of the King, while his father attended Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun with the disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Cottrell was previously jailed in the US after being caught by undercover agents conspiring to commit wire fraud, and recently launched his first book “How to Launder Money”.
He appears to have won significant sums on Polymarket by correctly predicting the outcomes of political events, including more than than $4.5m by betting that Donald Trump would win the 2024 presidential election, despite what many political pundits and polls said.
Prediction market exchanges like Polymarket have exploded in popularity in recent years. It does not yet offer their prediction market exchanges to users in Britain. But their increasing popularity in the US means many expect them to seek a licence to operate in the UK.
Analysts have warned that prediction markets lead to greater losses than regulated sports betting in the US.
Jordan Bender, gaming analyst at Citizens Bank in New York, said: “Prediction markets are creating worse losses for the worst users, while more educated betters are winning more.”
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