A Wall Street Journal investigation has found that roughly $1.9 million in bets displayed across more than 1,100 creator videos promoting Polymarket were not real, exposing a fake-engagement campaign at the world's largest prediction market as it pursues U.S. regulatory approval and institutional backing.
The WSJ probe, published Saturday, reviewed 1,105 videos from 10 creators posted since December and found a wager in about 70% of them. None of the roughly $1.9 million in bets shown was genuine. Across 118 of those videos, creators touted nearly $900,000 in fabricated winnings on bets that would have actually lost more than $166,000 in real markets.
The mechanics ran through dummy versions of Polymarket's site. Creators were filmed appearing to place trades on near-identical copies of the platform, including one accessible at the misspelled domain "poiymarket.com," the WSJ reported. A source familiar with the matter told the WSJ that the dummy site had been built by Polymarket; other videos indicated the sites were test environments for the company's engineers.
Polymarket employed marketing firm Virality to manage a network of "clippers," mostly college-age influencers, to produce the videos. Creators were paid roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month and told not to disclose the arrangement, according to the WSJ. Some only added "@polymarket partner" to their bios after the Journal made inquiries.
