The Fake Bets, Paid Influencers and Social Media Campaign Behind Polymarket’s Rise

How an investigation into viral prediction-market videos uncovered an alleged covert influencer campaign

Around the middle of 2025, a strange new genre of social-media video began spreading across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Influencers appeared to be making enormous bets on Polymarket, the prediction-market platform, on questions ranging from whether Donald Trump would mention McDonald’s to whether Jesus Christ would return before the release of GTA 6. In many of the videos, the creators appeared to win extraordinary sums of money.

The clips often presented the bets as an “infinite money glitch.” But according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal and Politico, the reality behind some of these videos was very different.

An investigation traced the viral clips to an alleged marketing operation involving fake versions of Polymarket, paid influencers and networks of accounts created to make promotional material appear organic.

The mystery of the missing trades

The apparent wins initially seemed easy enough to verify.

Polymarket trades are publicly visible, so journalists investigating the videos attempted to locate the transactions shown by the influencers. But many of the trades could not be found.

One example involved a creator who appeared to bet $1,000 that Trump would say “McDonald’s.” The video then cut to footage of Trump speaking at an event with McDonald’s imagery in the background. The creator celebrated as though the bet had paid out $100,000.

There was a problem: the footage of Trump had been recorded months before the influencer made the video.

Had the bet actually been placed when the creator claimed it was, it would not have won.

The apparent Polymarket interface in the video offered another clue.

The website that looked like Polymarket

According to the investigation described in the supplied material, journalists eventually noticed that some creators were not using Polymarket’s real website.

Instead, they were visiting a domain called poyarket.com.

The site was designed to resemble Polymarket closely. The visual similarity was especially striking because of the way the letter “I” could be made to resemble an “L” in certain presentations.

The implication was significant: creators could record themselves appearing to place and win bets without actually placing those bets on Polymarket.

That would explain why the supposed trades could not be located in Polymarket’s public database.

The investigation reportedly examined more than 100 videos. The supposed winnings shown in those clips added up to nearly $900,000. According to the reporting summarized in the transcript, however, people placing identical real trades would collectively have lost more than $160,000.

In other words, the videos were not demonstrating a reliable way to make money. They were demonstrating an apparently manufactured version of one.

Paid creators allegedly told to hide the sponsorship

The investigation then moved beyond the videos themselves.

According to interviews described in the reporting, some creators said they had been paid by Polymarket to produce the fake-win content. They reportedly received thousands of dollars per month and were instructed not to make the sponsorship obvious.

The goal, according to the accounts presented in the investigation, was for the videos to look like authentic social-media posts rather than advertisements.

That distinction matters because paid endorsements are generally subject to disclosure requirements in the United States.

The Federal Trade Commission says influencers should clearly disclose material connections with brands they promote.

Yet the videos investigated by journalists were reportedly not identified as Polymarket advertisements or endorsements.

Many of the creators subsequently deleted, archived or hid videos after journalists began asking questions.

Polymarket, according to the supplied transcript, did not respond to the Wall Street Journal‘s request for comment about the creator campaign. The company told the newspaper that it was committed to accurate, fair and transparent markets and said it planned to conduct a comprehensive audit of active promotional content.

The “clippers” helping the videos go viral

The alleged campaign did not stop with the original creators.

The investigation also described a network of accounts known as “clippers.” These accounts were reportedly paid to repost videos across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

According to the reporting summarized in the transcript, a marketing firm hired people to operate these accounts and provided instructions for creating “sock puppet” accounts that would appear to be independent users.

The clippers were reportedly instructed not to identify themselves as affiliated with Polymarket.

They were also allegedly given advice about making the accounts appear authentic and avoiding platform bans.

The purpose was straightforward: turn promotional material into apparently organic viral content.

According to analytics provider Tubular, the fake-bet clips received more than 140 million views.

That scale transformed what might otherwise have been a collection of obscure influencer advertisements into a major social-media phenomenon.

A second influencer campaign

The investigation described another layer of Polymarket’s promotional strategy.

Politico journalists reportedly traced payments made by a Polymarket executive to influencers and online personalities. According to the reporting summarized in the transcript, the executive used a personal PayPal account to make some of the payments.

Politico reportedly confirmed approximately $350,000 in payments to influencers and creators, while the total amount sent by the executive was said to be around $2.5 million to more than 800 people over 14 months.

Some recipients subsequently posted about Polymarket, but the investigation found that many posts did not disclose the financial relationship.

The issue was particularly significant because some posts appeared to resemble news updates rather than conventional advertisements.

The FTC’s guidance, as described in the investigation, calls for influencers to make their relationships with advertisers obvious to consumers.

Polymarket said partnerships with influencers were part of its standard business practices and described its broader objective as providing accurate, transparent and data-driven market information.

A high-profile deal with a livestreamer

The investigation also examined Polymarket’s relationship with livestreamer Adin Ross.

According to a source cited by the Wall Street Journal, Ross had a multimillion-dollar deal with Polymarket.

Journalists also identified clips of Ross discussing the possibility of manipulating or trading on information related to Polymarket markets. Some of those clips were reportedly selected for promotional distribution through the same clipping network.

This raised a separate question: how should prediction markets handle information that might give certain traders an advantage?

Polymarket says it prohibits trading based on stolen information, illegal tips or information obtained through breaches of confidentiality or other legal obligations.

The company also said its market-integrity system includes trade monitoring, on-chain transparency, reporting channels and escalation procedures for suspicious activity.

Why attracting new traders matters

There is an important difference between Polymarket and a conventional sportsbook.

On a traditional betting platform, the operator may directly bear the financial consequences when customers win. Prediction markets work differently.

On Polymarket, traders generally take positions against other participants. The platform earns revenue through fees rather than simply paying winners from its own reserves.

That creates a strong incentive for trading activity: more participants and more trades can mean more fees.

The investigation cited a study suggesting that roughly 85% of Polymarket traders lose money overall, while about 2% have won more than $1,000 in total.

The transcript uses these figures to argue that inexperienced traders can become an important source of liquidity for more successful participants. Some experienced Polymarket users reportedly monitor poorly performing accounts and take opposing positions.

The broader implication is that attracting large numbers of new traders can benefit the market’s existing ecosystem, even when individual newcomers perform poorly.

Why target American audiences?

One of the investigation’s most striking findings concerned the campaign’s apparent focus on the United States.

According to the transcript, clippers were reportedly compensated based partly on the proportion of their audience located in the U.S. Some participants allegedly exchanged tips about making accounts appear American, including suggestions involving U.S. phone numbers and SIM cards.

That focus was notable because Polymarket’s main website had effectively been unavailable to U.S. users following regulatory action.

But Polymarket was preparing to return to the American market.

In 2025, the company reportedly paid more than $100 million to acquire a licensed American exchange and clearing operation. Its founder, Shayne Coplan, said the acquisition would help pave the way for American traders to return.

An American Polymarket app subsequently launched, and journalists found that creators were also using fake versions of the app in promotional videos.

Regulatory and legal scrutiny

The revelations described in the investigation were followed by additional scrutiny.

A consumer-protection group filed a lawsuit against Polymarket, citing the company’s alleged social-media marketing practices and claiming that teenagers had been exposed to the content.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was also described as having an ongoing investigation into Polymarket at the time covered by the material.

The company’s regulatory history has been complicated. The transcript says U.S. authorities had previously accused Polymarket of operating a financial exchange without the necessary registration and that an earlier CFTC investigation was later dropped.

Meanwhile, Polymarket continued expanding its presence in politics, finance and media.

The company established partnerships involving major media organizations, while Donald Trump Jr. invested in the company and became an adviser, according to the supplied material.

What the controversy says about influencer marketing

At the center of the story is a broader problem that extends beyond prediction markets.

Social media increasingly blurs the line between advertising, entertainment and news.

A viewer may see someone apparently making an enormous bet, winning tens of thousands of dollars and celebrating on camera. The natural assumption is that the person is sharing a genuine experience.

But if the bet was never actually placed, and the creator was paid to make the video while concealing the sponsorship, the viewer is no longer watching an ordinary personal recommendation.

They are watching advertising designed to resemble ordinary user-generated content.

The alleged use of paid reposting networks makes the distinction even harder to see. A single sponsored video can be copied across hundreds or thousands of accounts until it appears to be a spontaneous trend.

That makes transparency especially important.

The larger question: who is behind the content?

Polymarket has built its brand around the idea that prediction markets can provide information about the future by aggregating the views and money of participants.

But the controversy described in the investigations raises a different question: what happens when the platform’s own marketing becomes difficult to distinguish from independent commentary?

The answer matters not only for Polymarket but for the wider creator economy.

Influencers have become an important source of information for millions of people. Their recommendations can affect what audiences buy, download, watch and believe.

When financial relationships are hidden, audiences lose information that could help them judge the content for themselves.

That is why the central lesson from the investigation is not simply about whether prediction markets are profitable or whether Polymarket’s model works.

It is about transparency.

When a viral video looks like an ordinary person’s spontaneous discovery, viewers should be able to know whether they are actually seeing an independent opinion—or a paid marketing campaign designed to look like one.