Polymarket faces scrutiny over deceptive marketing with fake trades and paid influencers

Polymarket, the crypto prediction market that rode the 2024 US election to mainstream fame, has a marketing problem. And by “problem,” we mean an alleged scheme involving fake trades, paid influencers, and replica websites designed to make college kids think betting on prediction markets was a money printer.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Polymarket paid college-age content creators to produce more than 1,100 videos featuring fabricated bets totaling around $1.9 million. The creators staged wins worth nearly $900,000, all while concealing their financial relationship with the platform. In English: the videos made it look like random young people were casually printing money on Polymarket, when in reality they were reading from a script and using fake websites.

The playbook and the fallout

The investigation covered videos posted between December 2025 and May 2026, produced by at least 10 content creators. The creators were reportedly instructed to use replica versions of the Polymarket website, not the actual platform, to stage their supposed winning bets.

They were also told to hide any payments connected to the promotions. So viewers had no way of knowing they were watching a paid advertisement disguised as organic content.

The fake wins weren’t just for show. They painted a picture of a platform where outsized returns were routine, potentially luring unsuspecting users into a market where real losses are very much a thing. The investigation noted that possible losses exceeding $166,000 were obscured by the staged content.

In response to the findings, Polymarket launched an internal audit of its promotional content. The company appears to be in damage-control mode, though the timing of that audit, coming after the Journal’s investigation rather than before, is worth noting.

Washington gets involved

The political response was swift. On June 26, 2026, Senators John Curtis and Adam Schiff sent a letter urging the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to investigate Polymarket’s advertising practices. The bipartisan nature of the request, one Republican and one Democrat, suggests this isn’t going to be easy to dismiss as partisan overreach.

The CFTC already has history with Polymarket. Back in 2022, the agency reached a settlement with the platform that included a $1.4 million fine. As part of that deal, Polymarket was barred from offering its services to US users.

Adding to the legal headaches, a consumer advocacy group filed a lawsuit in late June 2026 against Polymarket and its executives, alleging that the company’s advertising practices were manipulative and deceptive, particularly toward college students.