Polymarket Paid Influencers for Fake Bet Videos, Wall Street Journal Finds
myfrontpage.info · post 62764 · 2026-06-24
Polymarket, the crypto betting platform where users wager on everything from elections to weather, faces a credibility crisis. A Wall Street Journal investigation published Tuesday found the company paid influencers to produce videos showing fake bets and fabricated winnings. The influencers were told not to disclose the sponsorship.
The Journal analyzed over 1,100 videos tied to the campaign. Seventy percent featured bets that were not real.
Another 118 clips showed creators reacting to old footage and fake wins. Polymarket set up dummy websites for the influencers to use. One was “poiymarket.com.” Others were the company’s own test environments.
Some creators told the Journal they earned between $2,000 and $3,000 per month from the campaign. They were instructed not to reveal the videos were paid advertisements.
The typical social-media clip is familiar. A user shares a screen recording of a bet on Polymarket, then cuts to a reaction shot as the trade pays out. The Journal’s reporting suggests many of those clips were staged.
This lands at a difficult time for the platform. Polymarket’s model — allowing users to bet on real-world events — has drawn attention from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Regulators and lawmakers have been circling.
The company did not issue a public response by Tuesday night. It did not immediately return requests for comment from PCMag.
How did we get here? Polymarket launched in 2020, positioning itself as a prediction market where traders could put money on outcomes. The platform gained traction during the 2020 U.S. election.
It grew further in 2024, as users bet on everything from Super Bowl winners to Federal Reserve rate decisions. The company raised money from prominent venture capital firms.
It marketed itself as a transparent alternative to polling and punditry. But transparency has limits. The Journal’s findings raise a blunt question: Did Polymarket deceive the users it was trying to acquire?
If new users saw a video of someone winning real money on a real bet, and that video was a paid ad using a dummy site, those users were misled. They could not know the bet never happened. The scale is striking.
Over 1,100 videos. Seven out of ten fake.
The company created fake websites. It paid creators monthly. It told them to keep quiet.
This is not a small operation gone wrong. It looks like a systematic campaign.
The timing matters. Polymarket is under regulatory scrutiny. The CFTC has already taken action against other prediction markets.
In 2022, the agency fined another platform for offering unregistered commodity option contracts. Polymarket itself settled with the CFTC in 2022 for $1.4 million over similar issues. The company agreed to shut down its U.S. operations.
It later restructured and continued serving U.S. users through a loophole — users could access the platform via a decentralized interface the company said it did not control. Regulators have not been satisfied.
Lawmakers have introduced bills to explicitly ban or regulate election betting. Polymarket has fought back, arguing its markets provide valuable information. Now the company must also fight the impression that its growth was built on fake videos.
The Journal’s investigation gives regulators more ammunition. It gives skeptical lawmakers a concrete example.
It gives users a reason to wonder what else might be staged. Polymarket has not responded publicly. The company may argue the videos were marketing, not deception.
It may say the dummy sites were obvious fakes. It may point out that influencers are paid to promote products all the time. But the instruction not to disclose the sponsorship is a problem.
The Federal Trade Commission requires disclosure of paid endorsements. The Journal’s report suggests Polymarket told creators to hide the relationship.
That is not a gray area. It is a bright-line rule.