91Ö±²¥

Kalshi has levied sanctions against three political candidates for trying to make trades on their own races, a move that could signal increased scrutiny by the popular prediction market as the platform and similar companies face mounting pressure to self-police or risk greater regulation.

The three candidates were Mark Moran, an independent running for U.S. Senate in Virginia, Ezekiel Enriquez, a former Republican congressional candidate in Texas, and Matt Klein, a Democratic Minnesota state senator who is running for Congress, according to disciplinary action letters on Kalshi’s site. Enriquez tried to make a trade in his race, Kalshi said, but was preemptively blocked.

Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement and legal counsel, said the sanctions are part of Kalshi’s “proactive engineering solutions” to “identify illicit trading activity.” The activity, DeNault said, violated Kalshi’s rules, which were recently updated to ban this type of activity. It’s unclear if they were trading in a manner that was relying on inside information.

Kalshi users can wager on everything from how long the government shutdown will last to what show will top Netflix’s streaming numbers in a given week.

In a December post, Kalshi said it had millions of weekly users placing bets across 3,500 markets. The platform is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency tasked with keeping watch over U.S. derivatives markets. The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has ties to Kalshi and Polymarket, another large prediction market, causing concerns among ethics experts.

According to Kalshi, Klein and Enriquez admitted to the wrongdoing, accepted small fines and received a five-year suspension. Klein is the co-author of a bill that would ban prediction markets in Minnesota. The legislation is in committee.

Moran, who placed a bet on himself, stopped cooperating with Kalshi’s investigation and was eventually assessed a larger fine, of $6,229.30, DeNault said.

Moran, who initially ran as a Democrat, said in a brief interview that he had made the bet knowing it would be publicly exposed at some point. He said he hoped to bring attention to a vice that he called “dangerous to our democracy” and to his own dark horse candidacy.

“It’s almost so ridiculous that it was this easy to bring this attention,” he said, adding that he wanted to use the notoriety to promote his campaign ideas. “I look at it as this my patriotic duty.”

This article originally appeared in .

© 2026 The New York Times Company