Kalshi Bans George Santos for Life, Fines Three Election Candidates
Prediction market Kalshi disclosed five new enforcement cases, including a lifetime ban for George Santos and penalties on candidates who bet on their own races.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited by the ON360 newsroom.
Prediction market operator Kalshi has disclosed five new disciplinary actions, permanently banning former U.S. Representative George Santos and penalizing three political candidates who bought contracts tied to their own elections, Gambling Insider reports.
The penalties, released in a batch of enforcement notices, range from $2,589.96 to $71,356. Four traders received suspensions of one to three years. Santos was barred for life.
Candidates fined for betting on their own races
Kalshi found that three candidates traded contracts linked to elections in which they were themselves running, giving them direct influence over the outcome. That is against exchange rules.
California gubernatorial candidate Stephen Cloobeck drew the largest penalty of the three: $31,770 and a three-year suspension, after purchasing roughly $10,000 in contracts tied to the 2026 race. North Carolina congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout bought fewer than $1,000 in contracts on her own contest and was fined $2,589.96, also with a three-year ban. Maine gubernatorial candidate Ben Midgley faced a similar penalty structure, paying $5,434.30 for under $1,000 in trades tied to his campaign.
Kalshi said all three cooperated with its investigation and agreed to settle.
Santos accused of manipulating State of the Union contracts
The most severe case targeted Santos, whom Kalshi accused of manipulating contracts tied to whether he would attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. The exchange said he placed large trades before issuing public statements, some of them false or misleading, meant to move prices ahead of his own purchases.
Kalshi said Santos earned $17,839.57 from the scheme and hit him with a $71,356 penalty alongside the permanent ban. The case is separate from a Commodity Futures Trading Commission settlement reached with Santos in late July, in which the CFTC ordered him to disgorge $17,569.98 and pay a further $17,500 civil penalty over the same trading.
Account-access case and wider crackdown
A fifth trader, Eric Park, settled with Kalshi after the exchange found he improperly accessed another user’s account and made prohibited trades through his own. Park agreed to disgorge $14,472.65 and pay a $7,342 penalty. His one-year suspension has already run its course, and he settled without admitting or denying the findings.
The five cases follow a separate Kalshi settlement with Gabriel Perez, a former White House teleprompter operator accused of trading on advance knowledge of Trump’s speeches. Kalshi suspended Perez for three years, matching a CFTC settlement in which he agreed to disgorge $107,539.02 and pay a $65,000 civil penalty. Roughly $92,000 of that disgorgement is being drawn directly from his Kalshi account.
The pattern points to a widening enforcement effort around prediction markets on political events, as federal regulators reportedly prepare additional cases beyond the ones already disclosed.
Prediction markets tied to elections and political figures remain a grey zone for Canadian regulators, who have so far kept sports and entertainment outcomes out of scope for similar products. Players in Ontario using regulated betting platforms retain access to standard safeguards, including deposit limits and self-exclusion tools, through operators registered with iGaming Ontario.
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