A New York-based betting market platform reportedly allowed users to place money on the fate of the alleged assassin arrested in the cold-blooded killing of UnitedHealth’s Brian Thompson — before the trades were abruptly shut down by regulators.
Kalshi, which surged in popularity by providing the first legal election betting in the US in more than a century, offered so-called event contracts two days after the feds collared Luigi Mangione at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Dec. 9.
Retail traders were allowed to place bets on whether Mangione would be extradited to New York in the brazen Dec. 4 killing, if he would plead guilty to murder, and on whether he acted alone, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
But Kalshi halted trading on Dec, 13, telling customers it had received “notice from our regulator,” according to messages obtained by The Post.
Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which prohibits events contracts linked to crimes, terrorism and war if the agency deems them against the public interest, Bloomberg reported.
The Post reached out to Kalshi and CFTC for comment.
Critics slammed Kalshi for allowing the futures trading on morbid events.
“People are betting on whether this person is allegedly responsible for the assassination of another human being, and here we are desensitized to this and betting on whether he’ll enter a guilty plea,” Cantrell Dumas, director of derivatives policy at Better Markets, a Washington-based financial policy think tank, told Bloomberg.
Mangione-related contracts are still being traded on other platforms, including crypto-only betting market Polymarket, which claims it hasn’t allowed US users to trade on the platform since 2022.
The company’s founder was subjected to an FBI raid last month as part of a criminal probe into whether the exchange accepted trades from US bettors on Donald Trump’s historic victory over Kamala Harris, The Post previously reported.
Betting markets like Kalshi are able to launch trades on hot-button issues in less than a day without prior approval from the CFTC. While the agency cannot stop contracts before they go live, it can pause trading for a review period.
“There’s no 10-day review period like the SEC has,” Dumas added. “In this instance, Kalshi can certify a contract and next day, it’s live.”
The CFTC earlier this year attempted to block election betting on Kalshi, but a US appeals court ruling opened the doors for legal election betting.
Robinhood Markets and ForecastEx soon followed suit, launching their own election contracts.
It has yet to be seen if a Trump administration will crack down on election betting, though experts doubt it.
Former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz – who previously served on Kalshi’s board – was floated by Trump to lead the agency.
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