🚨 Polymarket just fired it's its CMO @MatthewModabber after he got caught paying influencer to promote FAKE TRADES ! Shayne Coplan tried protect Modabber but the board overruled him. Moddaber organized an influencer promotional campaign using fake bets and undisclosed ads to promote the site. WSJ investigated 1,105 promotional videos from the campaign. It found: - $1.9M in simulated bets presented as real. - 118 videos showing nearly $900K in fake winnings. - Bets that would actually have lost over $166K being shown as winning Moddaber tried to pretend that he had nothing to do with it and the influencers acted on their own But the investigation revealed he personnaly organized it all. - > $350K in payments to fraudulent influencer came from Modabber's personal PayPal account. - anorher $2.5M was sent from his account to 800+ suspected participants of the campaing. - he had Polymarket build a fake copy of its own website to stage the trades This is a BIG blow for Shayne ! Moddaber was his childhood friend and last solid ally at polymarket. Now that Moddaber has been pushed out he's truly alone. And it comes after he just got caught by investors using the company's money to fly private jets and cover personnal expenses. His position has never been weaker. It's clear that investors have lost confidence in him.

Kalshi just got scammed by a fake Indian Chief ! They wanted to sign a deal with a tribe to launch a Kalshi branded prediction market. but the chief they signed with was an IMPOSTOR. Kalshi is trying to gain the support of Native American by bribing they with juicy partnerships. They thought they had struck a deal with Wilson Yargee, Chief of the Quassarte tribe. Except Wilson Yargee was not the real chief. the next the actual Chief of the Quassarte denounced the deal saying : - His leadership NEVER approved the deal. - He only discovered it through a CNN report. - The opposing faction had no authority to sign on behalf of the tribe. Turns out the Alabama-Quassarte tribe has 2 rival chiefs fighting for power. Samuel Marshall Jr. (legit) and Wilson Yargee (impostor), each with their own supporting factions. Now the legality of the deal rests on this succession dispute : > The legitimist faction behind Marshall say the deal is void since Yargee is not the real chief. > The impostor faction, backed by Kashi, insists the deal is legitimate and that Yargee is the real chief. Kalshi thought they were smart trying to buy the support of tribes before their supreme court case and now they are stuck solving Tribal succession disputes. Well deserved.

This is total nonsense. We're one of the largest early investors in Polymarket, and this story that Shayne was "caught red-handed" using company money is just a flat out garbage hit piece. Shayne wasn't taking a salary. He was 21 when he started Polymarket, he was living hand-to-mouth running the company out of his apartment, barely making ends meet when he was raising his seed round. We were his first term sheet and literally offered to loan him money personally, but he ended up not needing it when the seed round came together. After COVID and the crazy Biden-era crackdown on crypto that was happening at the time, there was a lot of chaos in almost every company in the industry. As an investor, we saw a lot of companies go through pandemic-era startup craziness, and Polymarket was no exception. But Shayne disclosed every dollar he spent, which turned out to annualize to about a software engineer's salary. That's including the flights, none of which were personal flights. Plus, SHAYNE STARTED the accounting and payback process, no one “found” it. In aggregate, it was nothing that an investor would balk at. He paid it back to the company in full, and then got on a normal salary like everyone else. It was an accounting problem, not an integrity problem. It was not a big deal. Polymarket has had growing pains, no doubt. It went from a small fledging startups to one of the most explosive consumer brands in America. But Shayne has leveled up alongside the company, and as investors we have total confidence in him. Enough of this stupid FUD. The end.