Utah files criminal charges against Kalshi and co-founders

Utah has opened a criminal case against Kalshi, the federally registered prediction-market exchange, and its two co-founders. Attorney General Derek Brown's office filed a criminal information in the Third Judicial District Court in Salt Lake County, dated 28 October 2026. It lists KalshiEX, LLC as the defendant, with chief executive Tarek Mansour and chief operating officer Luana Lopes Lara named as co-defendants.

The filing contains 14 counts:

• Count 1: pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony.
• Counts 2 to 13: online gambling promotion, each a third-degree felony.
• Count 14: general gambling promotion, a class A misdemeanor.

The count text names KalshiEX, LLC. The co-founders appear as co-defendants, and the filing's supporting declaration describes their roles at the company. The published copy carries no case number yet. Nothing has been proved: these are allegations, and no court has ruled on them.

Twelve bets, $114.87

The case is built on an undercover account. According to the declaration, Special Agent Scott Eggerman of the Attorney General's Office opened a Kalshi account under an undercover name, with a Utah address, a Utah phone number and a Visa debit card from a Utah bank. Between 13 and 24 September he placed 12 sports bets from Salt Lake and Davis counties, on the NFL, college football, MLS, MLB and the NHL. The last ones settled on 26 September.

The stakes add up to $114.87, according to the filing, and Kalshi charged a fee on each trade. The point is not the amount. Utah's case is that Kalshi should not have let a Utah resident open an account or trade on sports at all.

Why Utah went criminal

The filing leans on the state's earlier court wins. On 4 August 2026, Judge Robert Shelby of the federal court in Utah ruled that the Commodity Exchange Act does not stop Utah from applying its gambling laws to Kalshi. On 8 September the Tenth Circuit refused Kalshi an injunction while it appeals. Utah says Kalshi and its founders kept offering sports contracts in the state after both decisions, and the September bets are meant to show that.

"A federal court has already ruled that Utah's gambling laws apply to Kalshi," Brown said in a statement, according to the Deseret News. "Kalshi kept taking bets from Utahns anyway."

Kalshi rejects the case. "This is a crazy overreach; Utah is clearly playing politics," a Kalshi spokesperson said in a statement to the Deseret News.

Part of a wider fight

The criminal case adds to a civil suit Utah filed against Kalshi on 20 October and follows the federal government's own lawsuit against Utah, in which the CFTC, the federal derivatives regulator, argues that states cannot apply gambling law to exchanges it regulates. According to Reason, Utah is the second state after Arizona to bring criminal charges against Kalshi.

Elsewhere, Kalshi is on the attack: it has sued Missouri in federal court and Louisiana over sports event contracts, while New York's gaming commission has gone to court over Kalshi subpoenas.

In our reading, the criminal route raises the stakes beyond fines and injunctions, because it names the company's leaders personally. Whether it sticks depends on the same unresolved question as the civil cases: whether federal law lets states treat sports event contracts as gambling.

For readers outside the US: Kalshi is a US exchange registered with the CFTC, and this is a Utah state criminal case. It has no direct effect on players in other countries.