Polymarket paid creators to stage fake bets on copied versions of its site, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. Key Points: A Wall Street Journal review covered 1,105 creator videos fr
Polymarket paid creators to stage fake bets on copied versions of its site, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.
- A Wall Street Journal review covered 1,105 creator videos from December 2025 to mid-May.
- None of the roughly $1.9 million in shown wagers were real, the Journal said.
- Polymarket said it will audit promotional content.
Polymarket paid mostly college-age creators to film fake wagers, and sometimes fake wins, on near-identical copies of its prediction market website, the Journal reported Saturday.
The paper reviewed 1,105 videos from 10 creators posted between December 2025 and mid-May. A bet appeared in about 70% of the clips, but none of the wagers shown, worth roughly $1.9 million, were real.
In one January video, George Makihara showed a $100,000 win on a market asking whether Donald Trump would say “McDonald's” that month. The clip used two-month-old footage, while more than 50 real accounts that placed the same January bet all lost.
Polymarket built dummy sites, including “poiymarket.com,” a misspelled domain that can resemble the real one when the “i” is capitalized. Across 118 videos, creators celebrated almost $900,000 in fake winnings, though those bets would have lost more than $166,000.
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Creators were paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and were told not to disclose the arrangement, the Journal reported. Some later added “@polymarket partner” to their profiles after the paper began asking questions.
The campaign targeted U.S. users, though Polymarket has been barred from offering its main platform to Americans since a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Marketing firm Virality paid clippers only when at least 60% of their audience was in the U.S., and the clips drew more than 140 million views across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Polymarket told the Journal it is “committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets” and plans a full audit. The case follows Politico's Jun. 5 report that Chief Marketing Officer Matthew Modabber used a personal PayPal account to pay creators who promoted Polymarket odds on X without ad labels.
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