Overview
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has confirmed an active investigation into trades tied to George Santos and Kalshi has told reporters it referred the activity to federal authorities.
- Reporting by multiple outlets says Kalshi froze the relevant account after detecting bets that appeared to bet against Santos’s attendance at President Trump’s State of the Union and then flagged the trades to the CFTC and the Justice Department.
- Santos publicly said the day before the speech that he would attend but did not appear and posted from an airport during the address, and sources told NPR he had placed wagers against his own attendance that yielded thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
- Santos has denied knowledge of an investigation and said his legal team is in contact with the DOJ, while Kalshi and regulators say platform controls have recently been used to identify and escalate suspected self-dealing.
- The case highlights a wider regulatory gap as prediction markets grow, with past platform referrals, recent prosecutions tied to similar betting, and lawmakers proposing tighter limits on trading by officials.