According to a Wall Street Journal investigation that dropped last week, Polymarket, the hot crypto “prediction market,” was caught paying TikTok influencers $2,000–$3,000 a month to film themselves making big, winning bets on Polymarket’s platform.

One small problem: the trades were all FAKE.

The wins were staged on lookalike dummy websites built specifically to fool the camera — and the viewers — into believing they were watching real money being made.

The WSJ analyzed over 1,100 TikTok videos and found 118 where creators showed “wins” totaling nearly $900,000. In reality, those exact same bets placed on the real platform would have lost more than $166,000.

The irony?

A prediction market — a company whose entire business model is betting on future outcomes — couldn’t predict that lying on social media would detonate in their face. I’d laugh, but this kind of stupidity is contagious.

When you have to fake your results to attract customers, it’s not a cute marketing hack to hit your numbers – it’s FRAUD. And it’s only a matter of time before you’re found out and broiled for it, as you should be.

Real marketing only works when you have something real to say. Real testimonials from real clients getting real results. Real authority based on real experience. Real trust because your service or product actually does what you claim.

Here’s a mantra I’ve been repeating for years: the most expensive advice in the world is BAD advice.

BAD advice is almost always given for free or cheap by someone who doesn’t have the chops to charge more, or who is highly opinionated (not credentialed).

I realize blaming the victims of Polymarket’s scam is unpopular, but these knuckleheads who lost money have to take some of the responsibility for allowing a TikTok creator to give them financial advice. As the saying goes, a fool and his money are soon separated.

But don’t be too quick to smirk.

If you’ve ever taken advice from, or allowed your behavior, decisions and business to be influenced by some anonymous, random people online (like the Reddit sewer, perhaps?) then you’re just a gullible as someone betting $100,000 that Trump would publicly say the word, “McDonalds” because his teenager TikTok “influencer” told him to.

In the world of advice givers, you have to be careful about hiring the “cheapest” consultant or the person you feel most “comfortable” with. The best consultants aren’t interested in protecting your sacred cows or your feelings.

They’re interested in getting you the RESULTS you hired them to get.

Also, make sure whoever you hire has actually DONE it themselves.

Not just a member of a team who got the result. Not someone who was adjacent to a team where someone else got the result. Not someone who’s a “career politician” that’s never run a sales department for a growing company but wrote a book about it. Even if that book is a bestseller, it only tells you that they know how to market books, not actually DO the thing the book is talking about.

The world of “advice givers” is rampant with this: Marketing agencies who can’t get customers. Sales trainers who can’t sell their own services. Business coaches living paycheck to paycheck. How do they explain it?

They say, “Well, I’m not about material things and don’t want that big house/car/lifestyle,” or “I’m doing something more socially significant and laudable here than just the lowly objective of making money.”Nonsense.

Those peddling advice who aren’t getting the result themselves know better and are either con artists or completely delusional.

So before you take advice from anyone — on Reddit, on LinkedIn, in a Facebook group, or from some “peak performance” coach trying to sell you salvation — ask yourself one simple question:

Have they personally done the exact thing they’re telling me to do? Can they show me the receipts? If the answer is no, or even “maybe,” walk away.

If you’re tired of wading through fake gurus, bad advice and marketing that doesn’t move the needle, you’re in the right place. Every week I publish straight-talk strategies on how to actually grow your MSP — no smoke, no mirrors, no TikTok tricks required: www.RobinRobins.com