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Permanent ban for former congressman from Kalshi

George Santos has been permanently barred from trading on Kalshi, the U.S.-based prediction market operator. The company said the former congressman traded on the market for whether U.S. President Donald Trump would attend his State of the Union address in February and may have relied on nonpublic information during that process.

According to Kalshi’s disciplinary notice, the compliance team identified signs in account activity pointing to possible insider information use. The company said it imposed the penalty on its own initiative without waiting for outside action, and that the file was referred to federal authorities in early summer. Santos, meanwhile, thanked the platform for the ban on his X account and said they would see how much longer it could stay afloat.

The probe focused on trades tied to his own attendance

February bets and penalties

Kalshi said Santos placed a series of large bets between February 2 and 25 in a market directly linked to his own attendance. The company claimed that some of his public comments during that period were false or misleading, that those remarks moved contract prices, and that Santos made $17,839.57 from the trades.

The platform also said it imposed an internal penalty of $71,356 on Santos. In July, Santos agreed to settle a separate federal investigation by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC, the federal derivatives regulator) over the same trades for $35,000.

  • Kalshi said the trades were tied to an event Santos could directly affect.
  • The company said its internal monitoring systems flagged the account for suspicious activity.

Santos’s past and rising scrutiny of prediction markets

Earlier cases and his expulsion from Congress

Santos became a controversial figure in U.S. politics over fabrications in his résumé and criminal cases. Expelled from Congress after allegations of identity theft and electronic fraud, Santos later pleaded guilty to some of those charges; after serving about three months in prison, he was released by Trump in 2025. Santos was the sixth person ever expelled from the U.S. Congress.

Pressure for tighter oversight on prediction markets

The development came at a time when prediction markets, which allow trading on outcomes ranging from elections to economic indicators, are facing closer oversight. Kalshi and rival Polymarket have said they have seen spikes in unusual trading patterns, while the industry matures with expectations of higher compliance standards, especially around political and economic events.

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