The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the disgraced former congressman George Santos for alleged insider trading on the prediction market Kalshi, according to a new report.
Fresh out of prison for wire fraud and identity theft, Santos allegedly began a new scheme by fixing the odds on a bet of whether he would attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February, unnamed sources in an NPR report published Tuesday suggested.
Santos insisted that he was unaware of any investigation into his alleged Kalshi activity, telling NPR, “Well, that’s news to me.”
The ex-Republican New York representative posted on X a day before Trump’s speech to let his followers know that he would be at the U.S. Capitol for it.
More than $15.5 million worth of bets were placed on Kalshi over the question of who would attend the State of the Union. When Santos confirmed that he would be at Trump’s speech, the odds of his attendance spiked, according to NPR.
But the next day Santos signaled he wouldn’t be at the State of the Union, writing on X that he would instead be watching the speech from an airport TV. He said it was “not part of the plan!”
Odds of Santos’ attendance at Trump’s speech then tumbled, NPR reported.
Before his announcement, Santos had placed bets on Kalshi that he was not going to attend the State of the Union, three people with direct knowledge of his trades told NPR.
After Kalshi detected Santos’ trades and referred the case to the DOJ and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, the two agencies opened separate investigations into the matter, according to one of NPR’s sources.
A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed NPR’s reporting to The Independent.
The Independent has reached out to Santos’ team, the DOJ and the CFTC for comment.
A spokesperson for Kalshi declined to comment.
Santos pleaded guilty in August 2024 to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, after being indicted on a slew of charges in October 2023 for allegedly filing fraudulent fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission to receive financial support for his 2022 congressional campaign and charging campaign contributors’ credit cards without authorization.
Not even two months after his indictment, Santos was expelled from Congress.
Santos was sentenced to more than seven years in prison in April 2025, but Trump announced last October that he had commuted the former congressman’s sentence.
“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.
