The prediction market Kalshi has taken punitive measures 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 formerly running for Congress.
And then there’s Mark Moran, clips of whom have circulated quite a bit this primary season thanks to his eccentric speech cadence, and also just his whole deal:
Moran, a Virginia independent running for Senate who was at one point running as a Democrat, apparently placed a Kalshi bet on himself. He doesn’t dispute this, and says he put down $100.
He was also once a contestant on the reality dating show FBoy Island.
Kalshi’s head of enforcement, Bobby DeNault, told the Times that these candidates violated new rules against this sort of activity. In Moran’s “Notice of Disciplinary Action” posted online, the violation is spelled out in helpful, plain language:
“If a Trader is a decision maker, either directly or indirectly, or has any influence, directly or indirectly, no matter the scale and importance of the influence, on the outcome of the Underlying (event) of any Contract, that Trader is prohibited from attempting to enter into any trade, either directly or indirectly, on the market in such Contracts.”
Moran apparently cooperated with his investigation at some point and “acknowledged that these trades were improper and in violation of the Kalshi exchange rules,” but “repeatedly refused to resolve this matter via settlement and stopped responding to further 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, that was acknowledging this,” which his says he viewed as participating in Kalshi’s marketing.
What’s more, Moran claimed to the Times that this was his plan all along. He knew the public would find out about his bet, he told them, but he hoped that getting caught would expose prediction markets as “dangerous to our democracy.”
He apparently talked more in his Times interview, saying, “It’s almost so ridiculous that it was this easy to bring this attention.” Who could argue?
As of this writing, he had just begun rapid-fire posting on X, telling the same story he told the Times, and taking credit for a massive earned media victory.
Kalshi accused me today of insider trading on a market that, after my request, their head of politics added me to…after it was public info that I was going to run…
*all screenshots in the video for reporters*
For $100 I got the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, AP, Bloomberg,… https://t.co/9o6wgwSOFA pic.twitter.com/GTIsCmBX0u
— Mark Moran for U.S. Senate (@itsmarkmoran) April 23, 2026
Kalshi, for its part, is facing perhaps 20 civil suits, and was charged last month with crimes in Arizona related to alleged illegal betting and wagering, including one called “election wagering.” Mike Selig, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, disputed the need for charges, saying the Kalshi matter is a “jurisdictional dispute and entirely inappropriate as a criminal prosecution.”
