Kalsi ad at a bus stop in Washington, DC, March 19, 2026.
Daniel Heuer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Prediction market platform Carsi announced Wednesday that it has suspended and fined three congressional candidates in Minnesota, Texas and Virginia for “political insider trading” in their campaigns.
Carsi said in a statement that all three candidates had been “warned due to newly announced safeguards to prevent political candidates from trading on their elections.”
The confirmed candidate was Mark Moran, who was a candidate in Virginia’s Democratic Senate Democratic primary before deciding to run for the seat as an independent. Matt Klein, a Minnesota Democrat, is running in the primary for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District. And Ezequiel Enriquez of Texas is running in the Republican primary for the state’s 21st Congressional District.
Carsi said Moran “trades in two markets related to his campaign.” “The first was the market for individuals running for office in 2026,” Carsi said. “This individual traded for himself in this market. Then, when the trader announced himself as a candidate in the Virginia Senate Democratic primary, he again traded for his own candidate.”
Carsi said Moran initially acknowledged being a candidate and violating the rules when contacted by Carsi, but then stopped communicating with the company’s team.
Carsi fined Moran $6,229.30 and suspended him from the trading platform for five years, the company said.
The company said Klein and Enriquez cooperated with Carsi’s investigation.
Mr. Klein, who had made “small trades based on his election results,” also “admitted that his trading activities violated the rules of the Calsi Exchange, and agreed to pay a $539.85 fine and serve a five-year suspension from Calsi,” the company said in a statement.
Carsi said Enriquez, who made “slightly more significant” transactions than Klein in his campaign, “fully cooperated with the investigation, admitted to violating the rules, and agreed to settle the case by paying a $784.20 fine and accepting a five-year suspension.”
Klein’s campaign and Enriquez did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement on X, Moran said, “I knew this was going to happen (and I knew it wouldn’t be a Democratic nomination) and I traded myself $100 for attention highlighting how this company is destroying young people. And as a senator, I will go after Calci and impose a serious penalty on them – a 25% vice tax to pay off the national debt.”
“It’s also ironic timing given that Calci has to advertise on the Washington, D.C. subway that it’s a fair and legal gambling market. They know the heat, and the administrators are already picking winners in the polymarket… They know they’re stupid and trying to do the same thing as the tobacco companies,” Moran wrote.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes a minority investment in CNBC.
