--- title: Bipartisan Senators Ask CFTC Chair Whether Agency Is Investigating Polymarket's Fake-Bet Campaign excerpt: Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis sent a letter to CFTC Chair Michael Selig Thursday asking whether the agency is investigating Polymarket's paid influencer scheme, putting the regulator in a bind over a platform it licenses but whose staged trades ran on an offshore site beyond its direct reach. ---
Two senators spanning the political divide pressed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission this week to answer whether it is investigating Polymarket over a staged-trading campaign that, according to the Wall Street Journal investigation, generated more than 140 million views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
In a letter dated Thursday to CFTC Chair Michael Selig, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) cited the Journal investigation, which found Polymarket paid creators monthly fees to film trades on dummy sites built to mimic its real platform. None of the roughly $1.9 million in apparent winnings shown across more than 1,100 videos was real, CBS News reported. The Journal also reported that creators were instructed not to disclose the paid relationship, a direct breach of Federal Trade Commission influencer-disclosure rules. TechCrunch separately reported that a marketing contractor helped amplify the videos.
