Modabber, who once wrote that the key to growth is “a product people can’t shut up about,” was putting his money where his mouth is. The Polymarket executive used a personal PayPal account to send at least $350,000 to Shirley and other content creators between January 2025 and February 2026, an analysis of the transactions shows.

That sum is almost certainly an undercount. Modabber used his personal PayPal account, which is registered to an email for a salad spot he co-founded, to send over $2.5 million to more than 800 people during the 14-month span, the analysis shows. POLITICO independently verified the identities of about two dozen content creators who received money from Modabber by using public records and analyzing their social media accounts.

At least 20 of the content creators identified by POLITICO promoted Polymarket on social media after they started receiving money from Modabber, according to the payment records and POLITICO’s analysis of their social media activity. During the 14-month span reflected in the payment records, they posted about Polymarket at least 490 times on the social media platform X without clearly disclosing a paid partnership. The analysis of payment records and concurrent social posts highlight the company’s under-the-radar campaign to generate buzz in the political world around the highly controversial prediction market.

Among those paid: conservative influencer Alex LoRusso, progressive political commentator Brian Krassenstein, and Riley Gaines, a collegiate swimmer-turned-Fox News contributor who has campaigned against trans women competing in women’s sports.

The PayPal transaction records were shown to POLITICO by a person with access to the data, who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution.

A Polymarket spokesperson told POLITICO the partnerships with influencers were part of its standard business practices.

“We routinely collaborate with a diverse range of independent organizations, partners and content creators spanning the political spectrum and constantly monitor, evaluate our progress and make the necessary adjustments in order to achieve our core mission of providing the most accurate, transparent, and data-driven market insights to a global audience,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson declined to answer questions on the company’s strategy for partnering with influencers, its policies for disclosing those deals on social media, why Modabber used a personal account for the transactions and whether the payments were reported as business expenses to the IRS.

Modabber did not respond to requests for comment.

Led by 28-year-old CEO Shayne Coplan, Polymarket has primarily functioned outside the U.S. since Wall Street regulators banned it for operating without a license in 2022. But the company — which offers users the chance to bet on U.S. elections, the Super Bowl and even the Iran war — has seen its trading volumes skyrocket since President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024, as prediction markets have entered the mainstream.

Trump’s administration faces mounting pressure to rein in prediction market platforms like Polymarket and its main competitor, Kalshi, over insider trading concerns. But the president, whose son Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket and paid adviser to Kalshi, has taken a mostly laissez-faire approach. Trump’s administration dropped a pair of investigations into the company last summer, effectively clearing the way for Polymarket to re-enter the U.S. market by acquiring a federally regulated exchange. Last week, he attacked several blue state leaders who have sought to regulate the platforms, saying it’s “critically important” the federal government take the lead and that the companies “will thrive.”

As the policy debate over prediction markets plays out, Polymarket is harnessing influencers’ massive online audiences to turn itself into a household name. On X, the influencers trumpet claims about Polymarket’s accuracy, whether it’s predicting the outcome of the New York City mayoral election in 2025 or the exact date when a government shutdown would end — all while failing to mention the company’s role bankrolling their posts. In many of their posts, Polymarket is framed as an authoritative source, and viewers may never realize they’re scrolling past sponsored content.

“People are not consciously thinking about whether an influencer is profiting every time they see a post,” said Renée DiResta, author of a book about social media propagandists, “Invisible Rulers,” and a Georgetown University professor who studies influence in the digital age.

The Federal Trade Commission says social media influencers have a responsibility to disclose any “material connection” to products they endorse, but the agency did not respond to questions about how those rules apply to posts about prediction markets.

None of the X posts made during the records’ 14-month timeframe included disclosures that they were part of paid promotions, POLITICO found. The platform rolled out the capability to label posts as paid promotions on March 1, though an X spokesperson said clear disclosures like “ad” or “sponsored” were always required in commercial posts.

“It sounds like this would be the type of thing that generally should be disclosed,” Robin Moore, former deputy general counsel for the FTC, said in an interview.

Kalshi has been known to partner with online content creators too, underscoring the importance of social media to prediction market companies’ growth strategies. Last year, Kalshi hired a cryptocurrency influencer to lead its digital assets efforts, and it has partnered with social media influencers to boost its profile with sports fans and women.

“Everybody was either Polymarket or Kalshi,” said one social media influencer paid by Polymarket, who was granted anonymity because they feared retribution. “Kalshi and Polymarket, they literally at some point owned all big influencers.”

The influencer, who has hundreds of thousands of followers on X, said they received thousands of dollars from Polymarket to post about the company since 2024.

Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana declined to comment for this report.

‘Cannot be faked’

In May 2024, Shane Ginsberg asked passersby in Atlanta, Georgia: “Trump or Biden?” All four people featured in the video he posted on his @shaneyyricch Instagram account expressed a preference for Trump in the upcoming presidential election against Joe Biden.

But the man-on-the-street-style interviews were not just about the election.

“I bet $5,000 on Trump to win the election,” Ginsberg tells one interviewee, as an image of Polymarket pops up on the screen. “Are you confident enough that he’ll win that you would bet?”

“Well, pull out your phone real quick,” Ginsberg responds, after the man says yes. “There’s a place called Polymarket. Polymarket.com. It’s the only place where you can bet on news, the election.”

Ginsberg was 19 at the time — old enough to vote in his first presidential election. And the self-proclaimed 8th-grade dropout had just started working with Polymarket to boost the company’s brand recognition, according to his website.

Ginsberg had started a social media marketing business called Street Poller, touting his ability to “dominate the scroll” by making videos of unscripted man-on-the-street interviews, then using a network of 50-plus content creators to boost their reach, as a Polymarket case study on his website describes it.

In some cases, Ginsberg’s fleet of interviewers didn’t even mention Polymarket. They simply wore the company’s logo on a T-shirt.

The timing couldn’t have been better.

Polymarket was paying social media influencers across the country to promote election betting in the months ahead of the presidential race. U.S. bettors were still barred from placing wagers through Polymarket under the company’s 2022 settlement with federal regulators, but the influencers rarely mentioned that.

Ginsberg, who received at least $77,000 from Modabber over PayPal, did not respond to emails requesting comment on his work for Polymarket.

Asked about Modabber’s use of a personal PayPal account for apparent business transactions, a PayPal spokesperson declined to comment on specific accounts, but referred POLITICO to a portion of its user agreement that describes personal accounts as “primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.”

“If the activity associated with your personal account primarily involves business or commercial activity, PayPal may close your account unless you agree to cease the business or commercial activity or convert your personal account to a business,” the company’s agreement states.

In the lead up to the election, when Polymarket users successfully wagered millions of dollars on Trump besting then-Vice President Kamala Harris to win a second term, the platform saw a surge in popularity. More than $1.5 billion traded hands on Polymarket’s wager that Trump would win, while more than $1 billion flowed behind Harris’ candidacy. One measure of monthly trading volumes on the company’s main platform jumped nearly 400 percent between September and October 2024, according to Dune Analytics, which tracks prediction market data.

The second Trump administration seemed to augur a friendlier regulatory environment for prediction markets after a Biden-era crackdown. Under Biden, the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating whether Polymarket was continuing to accept bets from U.S. customers, in violation of the company’s 2022 settlement. Shortly after the 2024 election, FBI agents raided the Polymarket CEO’s New York City home — a step he painted as a “last-ditch effort” by the Biden administration “to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.”

Trump’s return to the White House yielded plenty of possibilities to bet on. After Trump created the slash-and-burn DOGE initiative with an executive order in January 2025, Polymarket debuted a dashboard to track all the cuts.

Influencers spread the word on X, the social media platform known as Twitter before Tesla CEO — and DOGE leader — Elon Musk bought it in 2022.

Eric Daugherty, a conservative content creator who received at least $15,000 from Modabber, according to the records reviewed by POLITICO, announced the Department of Government Efficiency dashboard’s release to his 1 million followers as a “BREAKING” update on Feb. 14, 2025.

Riley Gaines, who was paid at least $6,600, according to the records, shared the DOGE news with well over 1 million followers on X, opining: “This is awesome!”