Mike Lindell, a pillow salesman, has been forced to pay out $5 million after somebody took on his challenge of "Prove Mike Wrong" and won.
Lindell was outraged at the result of the 2020 election which saw Joe Biden elected President over Donald Trump - so much so that he delved into the world of conspiracy theories.
The pillow salesman was so convinced that Chinese interference skewed the result of the election, he offered a wager to anyone who could disprove the data that he allegedly had, per BBC News.
In 2021 he put his money where his mouth is and offered $5 million to anybody who could "Prove Mike Wrong" - not counting on the fact that somebody probably would.
A private arbitration panel ruled on Wednesday (April 19) that a software expert met the challenge and was owed the money.
Lindell created a so-called "cyber symposium" and believed the data he held showed that Chinese interference had swung some states to elect Biden.
Bob Zeidman, the software expert, was deemed to have proven that the data that Lindell possessed had no relation to the 2020 election.
Speaking to CBS, Zeidman explained that he stewed over the data presented by Lindell for a few hours, before coming to the conclusion that it was all "bogus".
"I called my wife and said, 'Think about what you want to do with $5 million'," Zeidman said.
The software expert, who confessed that he himself had twice voted for Trump, revealed that the data that was presented was "a simple Word document and a table," that was laid out "to look sophisticated, and it wasn't".
Ziedman said that he submitted his findings to a panel that was brought in to oversee the challenge, and after he heard nothing back, he opted to take legal action.
The private arbitration panel made it clear that it wasn't their job to determine whether the 2020 election results were interfered with, but purely to see whether Lindell's data had been disproven.
Lindell doesn't appear to be taking the news of being proven wrong too well, as he stated: "I don't owe him money. He didn't prove anything."
He continued: "This has all been one big plan, a coordinated plan, to stop me and others from getting rid of the electronic voting machines in the country and get back to hand-counted paper ballots."
Dominion, the company that operates the electronic voting machines, successfully sued Fox News and was awarded $787.5m after the outlet defamed them. They have since taken legal action against the pillow salesman.
Zeidman told CBS that when he receives the money, he will donate a portion to a charity supporting voter integrity.
The moral of this story is don't make bets that you can't keep.
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