Former Rep. George Santos received a permanent ban and a fine of more than $71,000 from the prediction market Kalshi after he placed wagers on his attendance at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address this year.
The disgraced congressman publicly posted about plans to attend the annual address in February — even asking what kind of suit he should wear in a now-deleted post. From Feb. 2 to Feb. 25, Santos began placing large bets on his own presence at the address, and by the time he posted that he was watching it from an airport TV, the New York Republican had already allegedly switched his bet.
“As a person capable of influencing the outcome of this underlying event, Santos was prohibited from trading in this market,” Kalshi wrote in a disciplinary notice released Monday.
Kalshi’s Compliance Department found that Santos had profited $17,839.57 from manipulating the “price of the Yes or No contracts that he intended to purchase.”
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The notice also cited Santos’ lack of cooperation with Kalshi’s investigation. A representative from Kalshi told NOTUS in an email that Santos “evaded discussions with our compliance dept[ment].”
Santos is the first person to receive a lifetime ban from Kalshi, The Wall Street Journal reported. The ban went into effect Friday.
The former congressman spoke out against his ban in a series of posts on X, calling Kalshi “an unserious company” that “violates its own notices and deadlines.”
“On August 7th they gave us a 30 day notice and today they leaked/ announced once again their frivolous nonsense,” Santos wrote Monday. “Leaking and attention seeking seem to be the M/O of this organization. Pathetic!”
Kalshi told NOTUS that Santos can appeal the ban and the monetary penalty against him to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent federal agency that’s charged with regulating the prediction market.
Before this Kalshi violation in his private capacity, Santos faced a litany of financial mismanagement accusations while serving the public in Congress.
The House Ethics Committee found that Santos had misused campaign funds for personal expenses, deceived donors and improperly filed campaign finance reports, among other violations. Congress voted to expel him in December 2023.
Santos also pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and identity theft and was serving a seven-year prison sentence when President Donald Trump commuted it last year.
When Santos placed the bets in question on Kalshi in February, he had been out of federal prison for less than four months.
The Justice Department is also investigating whether his bets constituted insider trading, NPR reported in June. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Santos $35,000 for “manipulative trading” and levied a three-year trading ban on the former congressman in July.
Santos’ disciplinary notice from Kalshi came the same day the prediction market sanctioned Laurie Buckhout, the Republican nominee for North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. Kalshi reported that Buckhout placed less than $1,000 worth of bets related to her campaign. Buckhout agreed to the terms of the settlement, which include a three-year suspension from the platform and fine of more than $2,500, according to Kalshi’s notice.
The district Buckhout is running in was rated “Lean R” by Cook Political Report after the state legislature approved a new map for U.S. congressional districts last year — making Democratic incumbent Rep. Don Davis’ seat vulnerable to a Republican flip this November.
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