TLDR
- Senators John Curtis and Adam Schiff asked the CFTC to review Polymarket’s marketing practices.
- The National Association of Consumer Advocates filed a lawsuit against Polymarket, CEO Shayne Coplan, and CMO Matthew Modabber.
- The lawsuit claims influencer payments were sent through Modabber’s personal PayPal account.
- Investigators say at least $500,000 went to online creators, including activist Riley Gaines.
- Polymarket has not addressed the allegations directly and says it is reviewing its practices.
Polymarket is under new pressure from lawmakers and consumer groups. The prediction market platform is accused of using hidden influencer deals to attract users in the United States.
The claims follow a report from The Wall Street Journal. That report looked at videos showing people celebrating big wins on bets.
Investigators believe some of those videos may have been staged. This matters because Polymarket had limited access for U.S. customers at the time.
Two senators have gotten involved. John Curtis and Adam Schiff sent a formal request to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
They want the agency to look into how Polymarket marketed itself. Their focus is on whether consumers were misled.
Lawsuit Details
A lawsuit adds more pressure on the company. The National Association of Consumer Advocates filed the case against Polymarket.
The suit also names CEO Shayne Coplan and chief marketing officer Matthew Modabber. It claims the company ran social media campaigns that were designed to look organic.
According to the complaint, many posts looked like personal opinions. In reality, the lawsuit says they were paid ads.
The suit argues this made it hard for users to know what was genuine. That distinction matters when people are deciding whether to place bets.
Payment Claims
The lawsuit makes specific claims about how payments were handled. It says influencer payments went through Modabber’s personal PayPal account rather than a company account.
Investigators tied at least $500,000 in payments to online creators. The lawsuit says this method made the payments harder to trace.
One example named in the suit is activist Riley Gaines. The complaint claims she received at least $15,000 before posting about the platform’s forecasting accuracy.
The lawsuit says that payment was not properly disclosed to her audience. It argues viewers could not tell her posts were paid promotion.
Because of this, the suit claims consumers may have made betting decisions without full information. That is a central part of the legal complaint.
Polymarket has not responded to the specific allegations in the lawsuit. A company representative said only that the business is reviewing how it communicates with users.
The representative added that Polymarket is working to build trust with its user base. No further details were given.
This is not the platform’s first regulatory issue. In 2022, regulators removed Polymarket’s license and forced it out of the U.S. market.
The company returned to U.S. operations in 2025. It did so by acquiring a separate exchange that already held a license.
Now the platform faces scrutiny from both federal lawmakers and consumer advocacy groups at the same time. The CFTC has not yet said whether it will open a formal review.
