{"id":131672,"date":"2026-06-03T07:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/george-santos-reported-to-prosecutors-over-suspicious-kalshi-trades-ap-source-says\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T07:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:35:07","slug":"george-santos-reported-to-prosecutors-over-suspicious-kalshi-trades-ap-source-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/george-santos-reported-to-prosecutors-over-suspicious-kalshi-trades-ap-source-says\/","title":{"rendered":"George Santos reported to prosecutors over suspicious Kalshi trades, AP source says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FILE
FILE – Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., talks to reporters as House Republicans hold a caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A prediction market reported former U.S. Rep. George Santos<\/a> to federal prosecutors after he boasted he’d be going to President Donald Trump\u2019s State of the Union address, then bet against his own attendance, according to a person familiar with the investigation.<\/p>\n

Kalshi<\/a>, the online prediction marketplace, referred Santos to the Department of Justice after detecting suspicious trades made by him ahead of Trump\u2019s Feb. 24 speech, the person said. The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.<\/p>\n

Kalshi also reported the trades to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal regulatory body that has vowed to crack down on insider trading in prediction marketplaces.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department and the CFTC didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to inquiries from the AP.<\/p>\n

Santos also did not respond to text messages or phone calls.<\/p>\n

The referral was first reported by NPR<\/a>. Santos told NPR that he wasn’t aware of the investigation. He declined to say whether he had a Kalshi account.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying yes, I\u2019m not saying no,\u201d Santos told NPR.<\/p>\n

The convicted ex-congressman<\/a> had repeatedly discussed his intention to attend the State of the Union, which came just four months after he was granted clemency by Trump in a fraud case that led to his expulsion from the U.S. House.<\/p>\n

On the eve of Trump’s speech, Kalshi put the odds of Santos attending at close to 75%.<\/p>\n

Then, minutes into the speech, Santos posted on X<\/a> that he had been waylaid at the airport. Immediately, several social media users accused him of running another scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cSantos talking to his accountant and telling him to open his Kalshi account and bet all his money on No,\u201d one user wrote<\/a>, alongside a meme of Al Pacino counting money in the movie Scarface.<\/p>\n

In March, Santos addressed<\/a> the complaints on his podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess people lost money,\u201d he said. \u201cSome people made unexpected money. That\u2019s to show you how fragile these markets are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santos, who won office as a Republican after inventing a bogus persona as a Wall Street dealmaker, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud<\/a> and identity theft in 2024.<\/p>\n

After serving just 84 days, he was ordered released by Trump, who called Santos a \u201crogue\u201d but said he didn\u2019t deserve a harsh sentence and should get credit for voting Republican.<\/p>\n

Prediction markets, including Kalshi and its chief rival Polymarket, have drawn scrutiny<\/a> as their businesses have expanded \u2014 with some lawmakers urging the platforms to do more to guard against insider trading.<\/p>\n

Both companies have said they are reporting suspicious trades to federal regulators. Some investigations have led to criminal charges. In April a soldier involved in the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro was charged with using classified information<\/a> to win more than $400,000 predicting the date of his capture on Polymarket.<\/p>\n

In April, the Senate approved a bipartisan resolution to prevent its own members from using prediction markets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The story has been updated to correct in the first sentence that Santos is a former congressman, not a current one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., talks to reporters as House Republicans hold a caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib, File)(AP Photo\/Mariam Zuhaib, File) NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A prediction market reported former U.S. Rep. George Santos to federal prosecutors after he boasted he’d be going to President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-131672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131672"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=131672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}