Kalshi prediction market has taken punitive action against three current or former candidates for national office accused of insider trading. according to the New York Times. The list includes Matt Klein, a Minnesota Democrat running for Congress, and Ezekiel Enriquez, a Texas Republican who previously ran for Congress.
And then there’s Mark Moran, whose clips have circulated quite a bit this primary season thanks to his eccentric speech cadence, and also his whole thing:
Moran, an independent Virginia Senate candidate who at one point ran as a Democrat, apparently made a Kalshi bet on himself. He doesn’t dispute it and says he contributed $100.
She was also a contestant on the reality dating show. FBoy Island.
Kalshi’s law enforcement chief, Bobby DeNault, told the Times that these candidates violated new rules against this type of activity. In “Morán”Notice of disciplinary action” posted online, the violation is explained in simple and useful language:
“If a Trader makes decisions, whether directly or indirectly, or has any influence, directly or indirectly, regardless of the scale and importance of the influence, on the outcome of the underlying (event) of any Contract, that Trader is prohibited from attempting to carry out any transaction, whether directly or indirectly, in the market for such Contracts.”
Moran apparently cooperated with their investigation at some point and “acknowledged that these exchanges were inappropriate and violated Kalshi’s trading rules,” but “repeatedly refused to resolve this matter through settlement and stopped responding to additional correspondence,” and was fined $6,229.30, the largest fine of the three candidates.
Moran told the Times: “They wanted me to make a public statement, a tweet, acknowledging this,” which he said he considered involvement in Kalshi’s marketing.
What’s more, Moran told the Times that this was his plan from the beginning. He knew the public would find out about his bet, he told them, but he hoped that if they found out it would expose prediction markets as “dangerous to our democracy.”
He apparently spoke more in his interview with the Times, saying, “It’s almost so ridiculous that it was so easy to attract so much attention.” Who could argue?
At the time of writing these lines, it had barely begun quick post ontelling the same story he told the Times, and taking credit for a huge media victory obtained.
Kalshi accused me today of using inside information in a market that, after my request, his head of policy added me to… after it was public information that he was going to direct…
*all screenshots in the video for journalists*
For $100 I bought the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, AP, Bloomberg,… https://t.co/9o6wgwSOFA pic.twitter.com/GTIsCmBX0u
— Mark Moran for United States Senate (@itsmarkmoran) April 23, 2026
Kalshi, for her part, faces maybe 20 civil lawsuitsand it was collected last month with crimes in Arizona related to alleged illegal betting and gambling, including one called “election betting.” Mike Selig, Chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, questioned the need for chargessaying the Kalshi matter is a “jurisdictional dispute and wholly inappropriate as a criminal proceeding”.
