Imagine scrolling through social media and seeing a video: an excited young man shows off his $100,000 win on a bet that Trump would say "McDonald's" in a public speech in January. The win looks real. The site looks real. The excitement looks real.
None of it was real.
The Wall Street Journal's Investigation
The WSJ analyzed over 1,105 videos published by creators on social platforms and uncovered a commercial disinformation system on an industrial scale organized by Polymarket, the prediction market platform.
The findings:
- Every single bet shown in the videos was fake — totaling an apparent $1.9 million entirely made up
- The videos were filmed on nearly identical copies of the real Polymarket site
- Creators were typically paid $2,000-3,000 a month
- Polymarket explicitly instructed creators to not disclose the commercial relationship
- The target was explicitly the American audience — despite Polymarket being technically banned in the US
In the Trump-and-McDonald's video example: creator George Makihara showed an apparent $100,000 win on that bet. Trump never publicly said "McDonald's" that month. The bet was fake. The win was fake.
The Legal Paradox
Polymarket operates in a legally complicated context in the US. In 2022, it reached a settlement with the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) that required it not to operate its main crypto exchange platform for American users.
Despite this, the creator campaign was explicitly aimed at the American audience. The videos were optimized for American algorithms, the creators were American, and the message was designed to convince American users to sign up for a platform they shouldn't be able to use.
Why This Story Goes Beyond Polymarket
What the WSJ uncovered isn't an isolated case of questionable marketing — it's a case study in how a systematic commercial disinformation campaign gets built through the creator economy.
The ingredients Polymarket used:
- Copied platforms to make the videos credible
- Young creators (mostly college students) paid enough to agree, but not enough to become well-known and easily checked
- Non-disclosure of the commercial relationship, turning paid advertising into a spontaneous testimonial
- Volume — 1,105 videos are enough to flood feeds and create the perception of organic spread
Every social platform has policies against undisclosed paid partnerships. But enforcing them across 1,105 videos distributed over multiple platforms requires a level of monitoring that doesn't currently exist systematically.
The Lesson for Content Consumers
This story is a concrete reminder: videos of people showing off winnings, earnings, or extraordinary results with financial products, crypto, or online services require a level of skepticism proportional to the scale of what they're showing.
If someone wins $100,000 on a bet and says so on TikTok, the right questions are:
- Is there a commercial partnership disclosure?
- Is the result independently verifiable?
- Does the site or platform shown match the real version?
In an age of perfectly copied sites and increasingly convincing deepfakes, visual verification alone isn't enough.
Polymarket had not publicly commented in detail on the specifics of the investigation at the time of publication. The story is developing.