George Santos receives three-year ban from CFTC trading

George Santos received a three-year CFTC trading ban for manipulating prediction contracts

Tarek Mansour told DC Fintech Week on Thursday that roughly 100 Kalshi users flagged George Santos's suspicious trades within minutes of execution, a detail the CEO offered as evidence that prediction market transparency functions as a compliance mechanism.

Santos, the former New York congressman, traded contracts tied to his own attendance at President Trump's State of the Union address between February 12 and February 25 while making misleading public statements that moved prices. The CFTC ordered him to return $17,569.98 in profits and pay a $17,500 penalty. He received a three-year trading ban. Kalshi permanently barred him from the platform in August.

Mansour's broader argument is that public transaction visibility makes manipulation easier to detect than in conventional financial markets. Two other enforcement actions from the same period test that claim. Former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez paid $172,539.02 in disgorgement and penalties after using advance knowledge of Trump's speeches to trade word-prediction contracts. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke faces federal charges alleging he used classified information to generate more than $400,000 on Polymarket contracts before the U.S. operation to capture Nicolás Maduro.