George Santos, the former New York congressman now under federal scrutiny for his Kalshi trades

CNN June 02, 2026

Former NY Rep. George Santos Under Investigation for Alleged Insider Trading on Kalshi

Former Rep. George Santos — whose seven-year fraud sentence was commuted last year — is under federal scrutiny for his trading on Kalshi, CNN's Marshall Cohen reports. The prediction platform flagged suspicious activity in a market on whether Santos would attend this year's State of the Union: Santos said publicly he would be there, traders staked millions across the attendance markets, and he ultimately didn't show. Kalshi determined the account was his, froze it, and referred the matter to the Justice Department and the CFTC, which is now investigating. The story lands as prediction markets explode in popularity — regulated like commodity futures, not gambling — and as lawmakers warn the rules haven't caught up with the industry.

Our Thoughts

Strip away the celebrity angle and this story is about something structural: prediction markets let people wager on human behavior, and whenever that’s true, the person whose behavior is being wagered on holds perfect inside information. A market on “will George Santos attend the State of the Union” is a market only Santos can never lose — which is exactly why securities law spent a century building walls around insider trading. Event contracts have no such walls yet. The CFTC and DOJ referrals here are the system discovering, case by case, what guardrails the category is missing.

We’ve been tracking this regulatory vacuum for months — the Senate hearings, the CFTC–New York jurisdiction fight, and CNN’s own reporting on 18-year-olds rushing into these markets (the piece that cited GAMeetingFinder as a help resource). Worth noting: CNN discloses in this article that it has a data partnership with Kalshi — and still ran the story. The category’s problems are getting harder for anyone to look away from.

For our community the takeaway isn’t Santos — it’s the reminder that these platforms are growing faster than the rules meant to keep them honest, and faster than the support systems for the people getting hurt on them. If trading on event contracts has stopped feeling like investing and started feeling like something you can’t put down, a free, anonymous meeting is a place to say that out loud.

Read full story on CNN

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