Polymarket CMO sent $2.5M via personal PayPal to 800+ influencers: reports
Polymarket chief marketing officer Matthew Modabber sent more than $2.5 million through a personal PayPal account linked to a salad shop email to over 800 recipients, according to a POLITICO investigation. The payments, made during 2025 and early 2026, included at least $350,000 to influencers who promoted Polymarket betting odds on X without disclosing the financial arrangement. Named recipients include Nick Shirley, Riley Gaines, and Brian Krassenstein. The platform allegedly drafted posts for influencers to share. The use of a personal rather than corporate account obscured the payments from public view and regulatory scrutiny. Polymarket provided a reaction after the story's initial publication, according to an editor's note.
Polymarket must now defend its marketing controls against CFTC market-integrity scrutiny or risk enforcement that treats undisclosed paid promotion as price manipulation. Any finding that influencer spend distorted odds would undermine the organic signal value that draws institutional liquidity to its event contracts.
Polymarket's undisclosed influencer payments join a pattern of marketing-driven integrity questions that already includes the LA election fraud post removal campaign, raising the likelihood that CFTC surveillance exams will treat paid promotion as a market-manipulation vector.