A Texas candidate didn’t just run in his own race-he also bet on it. Now he’s facing penalties.
Online prediction market Kalshi announced Wednesday that it fined Republican candidate Ezekiel “Zeke” Enriquez after determining he traded on the outcome of his own campaign.
Enriquez, who ran in the Republican primary for Texas’ 21st Congressional District, was one of three candidates named in Kalshi’s report Wednesday and faces fines and suspensions from the popular app. The two other political candidates Kalshi named for allegedly trading on their own races were: Matt Klein, a Democrat in Minnesota’s 2nd District, and Mark Moran, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Virginia.
According to Kalshi’s regulatory documents, Enriquez traded less than $100 worth of contracts related to his candidacy, despite finishing 11th in the primaries and receiving 1.4 percent of the vote. He was fined $784 and was suspended from the platform for five years following a full investigation.
Enriquez has said his family has deep roots in the district, tracing back seven generations to a seventh great-grandmother who settled in Fredericksburg. He was born and raised in San Marcos and later graduated from Lone Star College in the Houston area with an associate degree in business management.
“Just like in traditional financial markets, bad actors will try to cheat,” Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, said in the statement. “Regulated exchanges must constantly evolve and adapt their systems to address insider threats.”
Chron has reached out to Enriquez for comment, but has not heard back. Kalshi, however, in its report, said he was “fully cooperative.”
Kalshi has become a popular prediction app that has been used to place bets on anything and everything, ranging from popular culture to politics. The popular app even drew attention recently on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” where host John Oliver highlighted the billions of dollars flowing through such platforms-and raised ethical concerns about wagering on real-world events.
A laptop displays trades on the Kalshi website. A Texas GOP candidate was busted for insider trading on the app. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane) (Jenny Kane/Associated Press)
“The impulse to try to make money betting on war or an unfolding tragedy is really dark,” Oliver said. “When someone dies, you’re supposed to send their family a card that says ‘sorry for your loss,’ and not one that says ‘thanks for covering the spread!'”
Perhaps by coincidence, Kalshi explained in its news release on Wednesday how these revelations about the three candidates were meant to show how the app is putting safeguards in place to tackle insider trading.
“Cases like these demonstrate Kalshi’s commitment to policing all types of unfair or improper trading on our platform,” DeNault concluded. “Regardless of the size of a trade, political candidates who can influence a market based on whether they stay in or out of a race violate our rules. No matter how small the size of the trade, any trade that is found to have violated our exchange rules will be punished.”
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This article originally published at Texas politician fined for ‘insider trading’ through online prediction app Kalshi.