The total value of fabricated winning bets was $1.9M. Not a single one was real. We break down why Polymarket turned to deceptive advertising.
A Wall Street Journal investigation has revealed that prediction market platform Polymarket paid dozens of influencers, mostly college-aged, to film fake bets and wins using copies of its site. Content creators were paid $2K-$3K per month and asked not to disclose the partnership.
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Journalists reviewed 1,105 videos published between December 2025 and mid-May 2026. Seventy percent showed bets, but none of them–totaling about $1.9M–were real.
Polymarket has promised to audit its promotional content.
Contents
How the Polymarket Scheme Worked: Fake Bets and Spoofed Sites
The campaign centered on fake versions of Polymarket’s website. Influencers filmed themselves against near-identical copies with altered URLs, such as “poiymarket.com“–a lookalike domain with an extra letter. The real Polymarket runs on Polygon with USDC▼$0.9996 settlements, making every bet publicly verifiable. The marketing campaign did the opposite: unverifiable transactions that can’t be found on-chain.
One telling example: in January 2026, student George Makihara showed a $100K “win” on a bet that the U.S. President Donald Trump would say “McDonald’s.” In reality, Trump never said it in January, and the video was two months old. On the actual Polymarket market, more than 50 users bet on the same event–and all of them lost.
Across 118 videos, creators celebrated fabricated wins totaling about $900K. In reality, those same bets would have resulted in losses of more than $166K.
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Campaign Targeted Americans — Even Though Polymarket Is Banned in the US
Polymarket has been banned from offering services to US users since 2022, following a CFTC settlement. Yet the marketing campaign was specifically aimed at American audiences. Marketing agency Virality paid influencers only if at least 60% of their viewers were in the US.
The videos racked up more than 140 million views on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. While US users are blocked from the main platform, they can technically use VPNs to bypass restrictions. Polymarket has repeatedly stated its intention to return to the regulated US market–and this scandal could complicate that process.
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Second Marketing Scandal in a Month: PayPal Payments and Internal Leaks
This is the second Polymarket marketing exposé in a month. On June 5, Politico reported that Polymarket’s marketing director, Matthew Modabber, used a personal PayPal account to pay content creators promoting the platform’s quotes on X without disclosing them as ads. According to the report, Modabber sent at least $350Л to individual creators, with more than $2.5M flowing through his account to over 800 recipients.
WSJ also reported that streamer Adin Ross has a multimillion-dollar contract with Polymarket, and that the platform paid influencers to promote at least 19 videos discussing insider trading–even though the company claims it prohibits trading on stolen or confidential information.
Polymarket has said it will conduct a full audit of its promotional content. But user trust, battered by two scandals in a month, will likely take time to rebuild. These revelations completely undermine the platform’s image as a transparent market with verifiable on-chain transactions.
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