Kalshi announced Wednesday that it had taken action against three US politicians for violating the prediction market platform’s rules on insider trading. One of the candidates, Mark Moran, a former investment banker and contestant on the reality dating show FBoy Island, is running a long-shot campaign for US Senate in Virginia against incumbent Mark Warner. According to Moran, getting caught was actually his plan all along: “I bet $100 on myself, not denying that, I did do it,” he tells WIRED. “I wanted to see if they would enforce it.”
Moran claims he was inspired to pull off the stunt after observing what he believed was market manipulation on Polymarket related to the New York mayoral race in 2025. The intended goal, he says, was to raise awareness about how prediction markets are “contributing to the further devolvement of our society.” Describing his decision, Moran framed it as a kind of avant-garde campaign tactic that tested the limits of the “all press is good press” credo. “I’ve been waiting for months for attention to come,” Moran says. “Because in politics, money buys attention, but I know how to get it organically. It only cost $100 to get you on the phone, right?”
In a notice of disciplinary action against Moran that the company sent to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Kalshi claimed that the politician had purchased event contracts in markets related to his own candidacy and promoted them on social media. Kalshi noted that it had fined Moran $6,229.30 and banned him from the platform for five years after he “refused to resolve the matter via settlement.”
Moran claims that he stopped speaking to Kalshi because he objected to the company’s settlement terms. “They wanted me to make a public statement,” he says. That was the thing that I pushed back on, that’s a violation of my First Amendment rights, to compel my speech.” (Public statements are often included in the terms of legal settlements.) Kalshi declined to comment.
The other two enforcement actions Kalshi announced today, against candidates in congressional races in the Minnesota Democratic Primary and the Texas Republican Primary, were settled after the accused paid smaller fines. In another batch of cases announced in February, Kalshi revealed that it had fined far-right Republican politician and former California gubernatorial candidate Kyle Langford for market manipulation. In an interview with WIRED, Langford described his trades as a “campaign gimmick.”
Moran says that if he is elected, he plans to work on legislation to strengthen guardrails around prediction markets. A nationwide political battle is currently underway over what rules the industry should be required to follow. A number of states have filed lawsuits against leading companies in the space, alleging that they are running unlicensed gambling operations.
There is also growing concern over insider trading on political markets. New York governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order on Wednesday banning state government employees from insider trading, following similar orders in California and Illinois.
Although he switched his affiliation from Democrat to Independent at the beginning of the month, Moran is still listed as a candidate on Kalshi’s market for the Virginia Democratic Primary. His odds are currently at 1 percent.
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