Controversial market-prediction platform Polymarket is back in the news, this time over the reported ouster of CMO Matthew Moddaber. The New York Post reported Friday (Oct. 23) that Moddaber was fired in the wake of a string of unsavory incidents tied to the platform.
Polymarket did not respond to ADWEEK’s request for confirmation or comment at the time of publishing.
Modabber has served as marketing chief since 2024 and, according to his LinkedIn profile, was Polymarket’s 11th employee. He is a cofounder of photo-sharing app BeReal, as well as Salad House, described as “the first fast casual salad chain in Milan.”
But ordering a salad is far less complicated than wagering with crypto, and Polymarket has found itself in the spotlight of the media and the crosshairs of regulators in recent years.
It’s unclear whether the bad PR created by these events were causal in Moddaber’s reported departure.
In June, a Wall Street Journal investigation concluded that Polymarket had hired a small army of college kids to shoot videos of themselves making money off trades that were not real. The story led two senators to encourage the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to investigate, calling the reportedly fake videos—which amounted to fake marketing—“deeply troubling” and warranting “immediate scrutiny.”
This is hardly the first time the platform has tangled with the CFTC. In September, additional reporting by the Journal led the commission to investigate scammers placing bets using stolen debit-card numbers. Concerns about fraud led U.S. compliance officer Andrew Clifford to resign.
The CFTC has had its eye on the platform since 2022, when it determined that the bets placed on the platform “constitute swaps under the CFTC’s jurisdiction” and had to comply with federal trading laws. In 2022, the company settled for $1.4 million and agreed to comply with CFTC regulations.
But the settlement was hardly the end of bad publicity—or allegations of suspicious marketing.
On September 24 of this year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against Polymarket for running “an illegal, unlicensed gambling operation that exposes New Yorkers—including those under the legal gambling age of 21—to serious personal and financial risk.”
A month prior, the New York City Council kicked off an investigation into the marketing practices of four prediction market platforms—Coinbase, Gemini Titan, Kalshi, and Polymarket—over what it called “deceptive and predatory marketing practices”
“Prediction markets aggressively entice consumers to bet and wager on sports, politics, culture, weather, and pretty much anything. We refuse to let New Yorkers, especially our young people, become collateral damage,” Menin said in a statement.
These actions added to the suspicions raised by Harvard researchers, who in April published a study of cases “in which traders appear to have exploited material nonpublic information on Polymarket and Kalshi, spanning events from the joint U.S.-Israel February 2026 strike on Iran to pre-announcement trading in Taylor Swift’s engagement.”
Analyzing 210,000 cases, Harvard discovered a win rate of 69.9%, “well in excess of chance,” resulting in “$143 million in aggregate anomalous profit.”
Earlier this year, the AP reported that 50 accounts had placed winning bets on President Trump announcing a ceasefire with Iran just minutes before he did. This came on the heels of an unidentified trader’s winning $400,000 bet on the ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro just hours before the U.S. Army’s Delta Force extracted him.
Despite these controversies, prediction markets have been ramping up their marketing efforts with high-gloss campaigns in a bid to build consumer trust. Earlier in October, Polymarket released its first U.S. political campaign ahead of the midterms by Academy Award-winning director Katheryn Bigelow.
But according to brand strategist David Deal, “Polymarket needs to recognize that achieving visibility is not the same as earning trust.”
“The company has a viable path to credibility, but it needs to address questions about its integrity that go well beyond marketing,” he said.
