Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi, expects the US Department of Justice to prosecute cases of insider trading on prediction markets.

Mansour told Semafor World Economy that insider trading on Kalshi is a federal crime and that DOJ enforcement is anticipated, with the platform already releasing cases and preparing more while imposing fines up to criminal prosecution (https://www.semafor.com/article/04/15/2026/kalshi-ceo-tarek-mansour-expects-us-doj-to-prosecute-insider-trading-cases). He described the effort as deterring bad actors on events including Trump Mar-a-Lago visits and SpaceX IPO timing, noting companies have been slow to implement preventive rules (Semafor, March 2026).

Polymarket reported over $2.5 billion in trading volume on the 2024 US presidential election, per its post-election transparency filing, while both platforms faced public accusations of suspiciously timed bets that echoed patterns seen in 2022 CFTC enforcement actions against unregistered event-contract platforms operating under the Commodity Exchange Act (Polymarket Transparency Report, November 2024; CFTC Press Release 8612, 2022). Coverage in the original Semafor piece omitted direct parallels to SEC Rule 10b-5 precedents on material non-public information in traditional markets.

A Brookings Institution analysis of prediction markets cited growing convergence between CFTC oversight of event contracts and potential DOJ criminal referrals as trading volumes begin to move political and corporate behavior, a linkage the initial reporting did not address (Brookings.edu, "Event Markets and Regulatory Gaps," January 2025; Wall Street Journal, "How Prediction Markets Moved the 2024 Campaign," October 2024).