Polymarket paid creators to stage fake winning bets on dummy sites: WSJ

Polymarket paid dozens of social media creators to film themselves placing fake bets, and sometimes faking wins, on close replicas of its website, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Saturday.

The Journal reviewed 1,105 videos from 10 creators posted between December 2025 and mid-May. A bet appeared in about 70% of them. None of the wagers, worth roughly $1.9 million, were real.

In one January clip, college student George Makihara showed a $100,000 win on a bet that President Donald Trump would say "McDonald's" that month. The footage of Trump saying the word was two months old. More than 50 real accounts placed the same bet in January, and all of them lost, the Journal found.

Polymarket built dummy sites for the videos. Across 118 videos, creators celebrated nearly $900,000 in fabricated winnings. Those bets would actually have lost more than $166,000.

Creators were paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and told not to disclose the arrangement, the Journal reported. Some added "@polymarket partner" to their bios only after the paper started asking questions.

The campaign targeted U.S. users. Polymarket has been barred from offering its main prediction market platform to Americans since a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, under then-President Biden, though they can still reach the site through a VPN. Marketing firm Virality managed a network of "clippers" and paid them only when at least 60% of their audience was based in the U.S. The clips drew more than 140 million views across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, per analytics provider Tubular.

Polymarket told the Journal it is "committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets" and plans a comprehensive audit of its promotional content.

The findings land as Polymarket continues to court mainstream legitimacy. The company is seeking to reverse the effect of its 2022 settlement and bring its offshore exchange back onshore, and it has been expanding aggressively, recently rolling out markets on private-company valuations and IPOs. Various state officials are pushing the other way: Kentucky sued Polymarket and rival Kalshi this week, accusing both of running unlicensed sports wagering.

It is also the second disclosure flap to hit Polymarket's marketing operation this month. Politico reported on June 5 that Chief Marketing Officer Matthew Modabber used a personal PayPal account to pay creators who promoted Polymarket odds on X without labeling the posts as ads. The report found that Modabber sent at least $350,000 to creators or influencers, while the account sent more than $2.5 million to more than 800 people overall. 

Polymarket is trailing rival Kalshi in monthly volume, according to The Block's data dashboard, with its regulated onshore U.S. exchange in a distant third. 

The Journal also reported that streamer Adin Ross has a multimillion-dollar deal with Polymarket, and that Polymarket paid clippers to promote at least 19 videos discussing how to trade on inside information. Polymarket said it prohibits trading based on stolen or confidential data.