KALSHI ANNOUNCED WEDNESDAY that it had taken action against three US politicians for violating the prediction market platform’s rules on insider trading. One of the candidates, Mark Moran, a former investment banker and contestant on the reality dating show FBoy Island, is running a long-shot campaign for US Senate in Virginia against incumbent Mark Warner. According to Moran, getting caught was actually his plan all along: “I bet $100 on myself, not denying that, I did do it,” he tells WIRED. “I wanted to see if they would enforce it.”
Moran claims he was inspired to pull off the stunt after observing what he believed was market manipulation on Polymarket related to the New York mayoral race in 2025. The intended goal, he says, was to raise awareness about how prediction markets are “contributing to the further devolvement of our society.” Describing his decision, Moran framed it as a kind of avant-garde campaign tactic that tested the limits of the “all press is good press” credo. “I’ve been waiting for months for attention to come,” Moran says. “Because in politics, money buys attention, but I know how to get it organically. It only cost $100 to get you on the phone, right?”
In a notice of disciplinary action against Moran that the company sent to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Kalshi claimed that the politician had purchased event contracts in markets related to his own candidacy and promoted them on social media. Kalshi noted that it had fined Moran $6,229.30 and banned him from the platform for five years after he “refused to resolve the matter via settlement.”
