Polymarket's rapid growth comes with mounting legal scrutiny

Current and former employees of prediction market platform Polymarket said that the company has “struggled with compliance failures, legal challenges and software blunders” while doing “everything in its power to woo new users and investors,” according to Long, Ostroff & Mehta of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Polymarket was alerted in February that fraudsters were “flooding the app.” A processor at one point had “rejected as fraudulent more than 80% of the deposits it was handling, a rate that far exceeded industry standards of roughly 1%.” Sources said that Polymarket employees “quickly raised their concerns” with CEO Shayne Coplan. Sources recalled that the compliance team was “floored” by Coplan’s response: “Just keep growing and pay a fine if regulators ever find out.” Current and former employees said Coplan’s reaction was “characteristic of his plan for Polymarket -- growth at all costs.” Polymarket’s legal challenges are “mounting on several fronts.” Sources said that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is “investigating it.” The N.Y. Council is “probing the advertising practices” of prediction markets, and Polymarket has been accused in lawsuits of “deceptive business pract...