George Santos is the first person to be permanently banned from Kalshi

Famed fabulist and former Rep. George Santos of New York has added another distinction: Kalshi's first user to receive a lifetime ban.

On Monday, Kalshi, the prediction market platform, said it permanently banned Santos after finding that he engaged in prohibited trading by making bets on whether he would attend President Donald Trump's 2026 State of the Union address. Kalshi said that Santos refused to cooperate with the investigation into his trades, which is why his ban is harsher than other insider trading cases.

Santos did not attend the address, despite posting on X the day before that he planned to be there. Kalshi said its investigation found "Santos made these statements with the intent to manipulate the price" of the underlying market.

Santos taunted Kalshi after it published news of his ban, describing it as a "gambling platform," a description that Kalshi and similar sites have strongly objected to, though some state regulators have said that's what they are.

"Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform. Let's see how much longer you guys are around for," Santos wrote on X, adding a kiss emoji at the end.

In addition to the ban, Kalshi ordered Santos to pay a penalty of $71,356. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission previously said that Santos made over $17,500 on the trades.

In July, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that Santos would pay just over $35,000 to settle charges of "engaging in manipulative activity in an event contract," the formal name for the positions users can buy on platforms like Kalshi. As part of the settlement, Santos was also banned from trading for three years.

Kalshi and its rival Polymarket have faced pressure from lawmakers over potential insider trading and other violations on their respective platforms.

In April, the Justice Department charged a US Army soldier after prosecutors said he made more than $400,000 on Polymarket from trades on outcomes related to the US raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Last week, the CFTC ordered a former White House teleprompter operator to pay $172,000 related to insider trading on Trump's speeches.

In early 2023, Santos became a national media fixture after multiple reports revealed that he had fabricated parts of his backstory ahead of his successful 2022 congressional run. Over his intense objections, House lawmakers voted to expel Santos in December 2023, making him just the sixth lawmaker in history to be kicked out of the Capitol and the first without facing a criminal conviction or being a member of the Confederacy.

In October 2025, Trump commuted Santos' sentence after the former congressman served less than three months in prison following a conviction on wire fraud and identity theft charges, which were also related to Santos' 2022 run.

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Brent D. Griffiths

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Brent Griffiths is a senior reporter at Business Insider who covers AI and tech.Previously, he worked at the Washington Post as a researcher on Power Up and the Finance 202. He started his career at Politico where he worked on the web production team and covered breaking news. His passion for covering politics has only grown since he cut his teeth covering the presidential campaign as a student journalist. He's also contributed to the Almanac of American Politics.

• George Santos