How WSJ reporters caught Polymarket faking its own site

Show & Tell from Indicator · Aug 19, 2026 · 38m

In this episode of Show & Tell, hosts Craig Silverman and Alexios Mantzarlis sit down with Wall Street Journal reporters Caitlin Ostroff and Neil Mehta, who found that Polymarket paid creators to place fake bets on a faked version of its platform.By reviewing more than 1,100 videos, they noticed that the screenshares themselves were from a faked version of the website. They discovered that the website was provided by Polymarket itself to paid creators. Along with uncovering that creators were paid to promote fake payouts, the reporters discovered that a firm called Virality ran a clipping…