Former Rep. George Santos is the subject of investigations by the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into alleged insider trading on the prediction market platform Kalshi, two people with knowledge of the investigations said Tuesday.
One of the people said Kalshi referred the matter to law enforcement after detecting unusual trades related to Santos’ attendance at the State of the Union address in February. NPR was first to report the investigation.
Kalshi and the CFTC declined to comment on the investigation. Representatives for Santos and the DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
NPR reported that Santos said the investigations were “news to me,” and said he was “not saying yes” and “not saying no” when the outlet asked whether he had a Kalshi account.
On the day before the State of the Union, Santos said on X that he planned to attend President Donald Trump’s address in person.
However, Santos did not attend and later posted on X that he was watching the speech from an airport. NPR reported that Santos had already placed bets on Kalshi that he would not appear at the event, allowing him to turn a profit of “tens of thousands of dollars.”
The probe marks the latest legal challenge for Santos, a former New York congressman who was expelled from the House in 2023 after a series of scandals involving fabricated elements of his biography and allegations of financial misconduct.
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In 2024, Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a federal fraud case and acknowledged a broader pattern of misconduct that prosecutors said included falsifying campaign finance reports, stealing donors’ credit card information, collecting unemployment benefits while employed, and lying about his finances.
Following his guilty plea, Santos surrendered to the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, New Jersey, in July 2025 to begin an 87-month prison sentence. His sentence was commuted by Trump in October 2025, resulting in his immediate release.
The big bet: prediction markets
Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction-market platforms have faced mounting scrutiny in recent months over whether users can profit from nonpublic information in markets tied to elections, military action, and geopolitics.
Business Insider previously reported that Kalshi fined and suspended three political candidates for betting on their own elections, while Polymarket flagged to authorities trades by a US Army soldier accused of using classified information to make more than $400,000 on markets tied to Venezuela.
Critics have also raised alarms about markets tied to conflict and regime change, including wagers related to Iran, as lawmakers and regulators debate whether the fast-growing industry can police insider trading on its platforms.
