Polymarket CMO sent $2.5M via personal PayPal to 800+ influencers: reports
Polymarket chief marketing officer Matthew Modabber used a personal PayPal account to send more than $2.5 million to over 800 recipients, according to a Politico investigation published Friday. At least $350,000 of those funds went to content creators who promoted the crypto prediction market, including influencer Nick Shirley and former swimmer Riley Gaines. The platform allegedly wrote posts for the influencers to share. The payments were routed outside Polymarket's official marketing channels, and the coordinated promotion raises questions about whether market prices reflected genuine trader sentiment or were influenced by paid advocacy.
Polymarket's market prices are used by media and traders as a proxy for genuine political sentiment. If those prices were pumped by paid influencer campaigns, data subscribers and counterparties must now discount or reprice that signal. The personal PayPal channel also suggests no audit trail, exposing partners to clawback or compliance risk.