WASHINGTON-Kalshi said on Monday that it would ban former Republican Rep. George Santos from using its platform for life after a federal regulator alleged that the ex-congressman made more than $17,000 by placing bets on his attendance at President Trump's State of the Union address.
In addition to the ban, Kalshi said its compliance department had imposed a penalty of $71,356, according to a filing on its website. It marks the first time the company has issued a lifetime ban, according to a Kalshi spokeswoman.
The former New York lawmaker, who was expelled from Congress in 2023, agreed in July to pay more than $35,000 to settle claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission against him. The regulator accused Santos of making misrepresentations and omissions on social media that influenced the price of his positions related to the address, and said he improperly traded on an event that he had the power to influence.
Santos's attorney, Joseph Murray, said at the time of the settlement that the ex-congressman agreed to make the payment to avoid lengthy and costly litigation and that the decision "should not be mistaken for admission of any wrongdoing." Murray didn't immediately respond to requests for comment about Santos' permanent suspension.
Kalshi said it banned Santos for life because he didn't fully cooperate with the company's investigation. Santos can appeal the decision to the CFTC. The CFTC banned Santos from trading on all platforms for three years, and noted in a report on the settlement that Santos cooperated with the agency's investigation.
The CFTC alleged that in February 2026, Santos made a series of misleading statements on social media about whether he would attend Trump's State of the Union speech, while placing lucrative bets on Kalshi on the matter.
When severe weather jeopardized his travel plans to Washington, Santos allegedly bought contracts saying he wouldn't attend the event. He sold those contracts for a profit after multiple misleading social-media posts in which he suggested he would be at the speech, the CFTC said.
After he was expelled from Congress, Santos pleaded guilty in 2024 to federal charges of wire fraud and identity theft. Santos was sentenced to just over seven years in prison, but Trump commuted his sentence last year.
The rise of prediction markets has prompted concerns in Washington about insider trading, and Kalshi has rushed to show regulators that it is taking steps to crack down on the practice.
On Friday, the CFTC said Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator under investigation for placing bets using proprietary information, will pay a $65,000 civil monetary penalty and give up more than $107,000 in winnings.
Kalshi suspended Perez from using its platform for three years, and the CFTC banned him from participating in trading markets for the same amount of time.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that federal authorities are preparing charges against a U.S. servicemember suspected of placing Polymarket bets on military operations that earned him more than $1 million.
Authorities are also pursuing a case that focuses on an employee at KPMG, the global accounting and consulting firm, people familiar with that investigation said. The employee is under investigation for betting on whether a specific public company would beat the consensus estimate for quarterly earnings, one of the people said.