RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Disgraced former New York Congressman George Santos just pulled off something no one else has. He became the first person ever banned from Kalshi for life.
The prediction market platform announced the ban Monday in a disciplinary notice accusing Santos of breaking several of its rules. The violations included trading on contracts where a user has nonpublic information or can influence the outcome, market manipulation, and failing to cooperate with a company investigation.
Kalshi says its compliance department found reasonable cause to believe that Santos traded in markets tied to whether he would attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this year.
According to Kalshi, Santos placed a series of large trades between Feb. 2 and Feb. 25 in a market where the payout depended on his attendance at Trump's address. He then made a series of public statements about his attendance, some of which Kalshi says were false or misleading and were intended to manipulate the price of contracts in the market.
"I'm going to be there for the State of Union in the gallery, guys,” Santos said in a video posted on X on Feb. 23.
A day later, on the day of the address, he wrote on X, “Watching SOTU from an airport tv was not part of the plan! FML.”
Kalshi says Santos ultimately profited $17,839.57 from the trades.
As a result, Kalshi permanently banned Santos from accessing the platform and imposed a $71,356 penalty. Kalshi confirmed to Gizmodo that this is its first lifetime ban.
“Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform. Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for. 💋,” wrote Santos today on X.
This isn’t the first time Santos has gotten in trouble over these trades.
Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) settled charges against Santos over manipulative trading in the same State of the Union Kalshi market. The CFTC ordered him to pay $35,000.
This is just the latest in a series of run-ins Santos has had with the law in recent years.
Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives in 2023 following a congressional ethics investigation. He later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and was sentenced in 2025 to 87 months in prison. Trump commuted his sentence in October.
Meanwhile, Kalshi also posted four other disciplinary notices Monday. Among them were notices against North Carolina congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout, California gubernatorial candidate Stephen Cloobeck, and Maine gubernatorial candidate Ben Midgley, who all attempted to trade contracts tied to their own races. All three received temporary suspensions.
These cases arrive as concerns about insider trading and market manipulation continue to come up regarding Kalshi and its rival Polymarket.
Despite prohibiting insider trading, both platforms promote the idea that “ experts ” can use their knowledge to place better-informed bets, and in turn, improve a market’s accuracy.
Just a few days ago, the CFTC fined a former White House teleprompter operator $172,000 for using access to Trump’s speeches to make bets on what he would say.
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