Polymarket has reportedly fired its marketing chief, also a close friend of the CEO

Leading decentralized betting platform Polymarket has fired its chief marketing officer, Matthew Modabber, who is also a close friend of the company’s CEO Shayne Coplan, according to the New York Post.

The termination happened after an internal probe into several embarrassing episodes, including a reported scheme built on fake trades, that worried investors, the Post said, citing unnamed sources. Per one source, the firm is finalizing a separation agreement. Modabber had been chief marketing officer since January 2024.

CoinDesk has reached out to Polymarket for comment.

Polymarket is a prediction market, a platform where users bet on the outcome of real-world events, from elections and sports to the weather and the Oscars. It runs on crypto and blockchain technology.

The platform gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, when its odds were widely quoted. Coplan, 28, became the country’s youngest billionaire as a result, according to the Post.

One of Modabber’s alleged misconduct was reported by The Wall Street Journal in June. The report said his team built a fake webpage to highlight videos of Polymarket users making money on fake trades.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened an investigation into the same, which is ongoing and so far, no wrongdoing has been proven. Polymarket told the Journal at the time it was “committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets.”

The decision to fire Modabber was complicated by his friendship with Coplan since high school, the Post said. An “irate” Coplan threatened to fire members of the legal team pursuing Modabber’s termination, one source said, adding that he later accepted that parting ways was best for the company.

Polymarket’s board concluded in recent weeks that Modabber was getting in the way of the company’s effort to shed its scrappy startup image as it eyes a possible IPO, according to the Post.

The board includes Coplan, crypto investor Nick Tomaino, lawyer Alex Spiro and an unnamed partner at Founders Fund.