George Santos was back in the news, and once again for cheating.
Between February 12 and 25, 2026, the former Republican congressman from New York bet on the Kalshi platform on whether he himself would attend Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. The catch is that his attendance depended on him, something the platform’s rules expressly prohibit because it gives the bettor direct control over the outcome.
Kalshi found something worse: Santos made deceptive public statements to move the price of the contracts in his favor, and then refused to cooperate with the compliance department investigating the case. He won about 17,839.57 dollars through those trades. The company’s response was a 71,356-dollar fine—four times that profit—and the first lifetime ban in its history.
Santos had already paid 35,000 dollars in July to close a federal investigation into the same scheme. On X, he responded defiantly, asking how much longer Kalshi would remain a company. The same man Trump pardoned after an 87-month fraud sentence is once again proving that second chances do not always change the pattern.