Wall Street Journal says Polymarket paid creators for fake bets

Polymarket is under fresh scrutiny after an investigation alleged it paid social media creators to post videos showing winning bets that did not exist. The review examined more than 1,100 videos and found many were filmed on near-identical copies of Polymarket’s website, with later coverage describing about $1.9 million in bets that were not real.

The allegations strike at the center of Polymarket’s pitch to users. The company describes itself as the world’s largest prediction market and tells customers they are trading on real-world events, not gambling on staged outcomes. The video campaign, if the findings hold, points to a far murkier model: viral marketing that can blur the line between a financial-style market and a lightly policed online casino, especially when clips are designed to look like proof of easy winnings.

Polymarket said it is auditing its promotional content after the report. That response comes at a sensitive moment for a platform trying to strengthen its legitimacy in the United States while drawing more retail attention to prediction contracts. The company’s marketing and compliance practices now sit closer together than ever, because trust is the product.

The platform also carries a regulatory history that is difficult to ignore. In January 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Blockratize, Inc., Polymarket’s parent company, $1.4 million and ordered it to cease and desist from violating the Commodity Exchange Act and related regulations. More recently, CFTC filings show that QCX LLC, doing business as Polymarket US, became a designated contract market on July 9, 2025.

That designation matters because it marked a step toward a more formal U.S. presence even as questions about advertising practices lingered. The new allegations suggest that legitimacy in prediction markets may depend on more than exchange approvals and legal structure. It also depends on whether the platforms can prove that the activity they promote is real, the markets are transparent, and the wins shown to users are not manufactured for clicks.