The Wall Street Journal found that Polymarket paid dozens of mostly college-age content creators to record fake bets on websites built to imitate the real platform. The manufactured videos collected more than 140 million views across social media as the prediction market prepared a federally regulated relaunch in the United States.
The newspaper reviewed 1,105 videos from 10 creators posted since December, identified wagers in about 70% of them, and determined that none of the roughly $1.9 million in on-screen bets was real.
He filmed the exciting moment he won $100,000—except the bet wasn’t real. A flood of videos showing fake trades is fueling Polymarket’s hype machine. https://t.co/LEgqvIRGvb
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 21, 2026
The most referenced case in the Journal's report is that of college student George Makihara, who posted a January clip that appeared to show a $100,000 win on a prediction that President Donald Trump would say "McDonald's" that month. The Journal found the footage Makihara reacted to had been filmed two months earlier. Trump did not say the word publicly that January. More than 50 real accounts that placed the same bet on the actual Polymarket site all lost.
Creators were paid roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month and instructed not to disclose their arrangement with Polymarket, according to the Journal's report. Some added "@polymarket partner" to their social media bios only after WSJ reporters started asking questions. A Politico investigation found separately that Polymarket's chief marketing officer routed more than $2.5 million to over 800 creators through a personal PayPal account.
The videos were recorded on dummy versions of the site. One clone ran at the misspelled domain "poiymarket.com," where a capital "I" substitutes for a lowercase "l." A source familiar with the matter told the Journal that Polymarket had built the dummy site. Other videos reviewed by the paper indicated the sites also served as test environments for the company's engineers.
Polymarket managed the creator network through marketing firm Virality. Creators were paid only when at least 60% of their audience was based in the United States.
In 118 of the videos, creators promoted nearly $900,000 in fabricated winnings on bets that would have lost more than $166,000 on the real platform.
"As the world's leading prediction market, we are committed to maintaining accurate, fair and transparent markets. We are part of a rapidly growing industry and are constantly evaluating ways to improve how we're engaging and earning the trust of our audience," a Polymarket spokesperson told the Journal.
The company announced a comprehensive audit of its promotional content. As of publication, it had not confirmed whether any creator contracts were terminated or whether the cloned sites had been removed.
The U.S. push behind the campaign
The manufactured content was targeted at American audiences during a period when Polymarket's main site remained geoblocked for U.S. users. The platform was forced offshore in January 2022 after a $1.4 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over its failure to register properly in the United States. In November 2025, it received approval to reenter through Polymarket US, a CFTC-licensed exchange it established after acquiring QCX, a platform with Designated Contract Market status.
Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $2 billion in Polymarket around that period, placing its valuation near $9 billion.
State regulators have contested the CFTC's jurisdictional claim. Kentucky sued Polymarket and rival Kalshi over alleged unlicensed sports wagering, following earlier actions by Nevada and Arizona. The Trump administration filed lawsuits against Illinois, Arizona, and Connecticut in response, asserting that the CFTC holds exclusive authority over event contract markets.
CFTC Chair Mike Selig defended prediction markets, warning that pushing them into "unregulated space" risks an FTX-style implosion, and criticized states for "regulating by litigation." Selig also faced bipartisan questioning in Congress over enforcement priorities and war-related betting markets.
Senator Elizabeth Warren accused the CFTC of being "steamrolled" by the industry, citing a roughly 25% workforce cut and a drop in enforcement actions from 58 to 11 in a year. Warren also noted that Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket and an adviser to both it and Kalshi.
A rival exchange and what the order book shows
Jason Trost, chief executive of UK prediction market exchange Smarkets, told The Defiant:
"The whole point of an exchange is that the order book is real and anyone can audit it. Regulated exchanges keep settlement records and answer to the CFTC for exactly this reason."
A Columbia University study estimated that roughly 25% of Polymarket's historical volume through October 2025 was likely wash trading.
The Federal Trade Commission's endorsement guidelines require that paid relationships involving financial products be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Instructing creators to hide a paid arrangement, then adding a bio tag only after reporters asked, sits close to a textbook violation of that standard. The $2.5 million PayPal trail documented by Politico provides investigators a concrete evidentiary record.
Polymarket did not address whether a marketing-leadership review was underway.
Alex Shepel
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