The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is conducting a broad investigation into Polymarket that reportedly covers staged trades and fabricated winning bets, Bloomberg reported Friday, extending federal scrutiny beyond the platform’s previously reported influencer scheme.

CNBC also reported Friday that the CFTC has an ongoing investigation into the platform. Bloomberg said the probe includes Polymarket’s social media activity, citing a person familiar with the matter. Together, the reports add a market-conduct dimension to what began as an advertising-disclosure inquiry. The CFTC has not issued any public filing or press release confirming the investigation or its scope.

Senate Pushes CFTC

The reporting follows a letter sent Thursday by Senators Adam Schiff (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT) to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, asking whether the agency was examining Polymarket’s use of simulated trading websites, staged transactions, and undisclosed paid influencer campaigns. The senators set a July 10 deadline for a written response.

As The Defiant previously reported, the bipartisan letter cited a Wall Street Journal investigation that found Polymarket paid mostly college-aged creators between $2,000 and $3,000 a month to film fake trades on dummy websites built to mimic the live platform. The campaign covered more than 1,100 videos posted between December 2025 and mid-May 2026, per WSJ. Creators were instructed not to disclose their compensation, the senators’ letter said.

Across those videos, depicted wagers totaled roughly $1.9 million. None of the bets were placed on the live market. In 118 videos, creators celebrated approximately $900,000 in fabricated wins — positions that WSJ found would have lost more than $166,000 on the actual platform, per WSJ.

2022 Enforcement Backdrop

The CFTC has prior history with Polymarket. In January 2022, the agency settled charges against Blockratize Inc. — the entity doing business as Polymarket — for a $1.4 million civil monetary penalty for offering off-exchange event-based binary options contracts without registering as a designated contract market. The settlement also required the platform to block US users.

Schiff and Curtis challenged the CFTC’s capacity to act as a federal gaming regulator in their letter, questioning whether the agency has the authority and resources to deliver consumer protections traditionally handled by state and tribal gaming authorities. They also asked whether prediction market operators may lawfully use simulated trades or fake websites in promotional content.

State Court Battles

The probe arrives as the CFTC is simultaneously defending its jurisdiction over prediction markets in federal court. The agency has sued Kentucky and New Mexico, arguing that federal law gives it exclusive authority over event contracts as states moved against Polymarket and competing platform Kalshi.

Polymarket, following the WSJ report, said it would review its promotional practices. The platform has made no public statement on the broader CFTC probe. The senators’ July 10 deadline gives Selig roughly two weeks to respond on whether the agency is investigating.