Utah filed 14 criminal charges against KalshiEX LLC and co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara on October 28, alleging they promoted illegal online gambling in the state.
The October 28 charging filing counts 12 third-degree felonies for promoting online gambling, one tied to each wager, alongside a second-degree felony alleging a pattern of unlawful activity and a single misdemeanor gambling promotion count.
Prosecutors built the case on a sting: Special Agent Scott Eggerman opened a Kalshi account under a Utah home address, with a phone number and debit card issued in the state.
Prosecutors say the agent bet $114.87 across 12 sports wagers on Kalshi from September 13 through September 26, ending $25.10 out of pocket. The first was a $10 bet on a Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game, placed after he passed a location-services check. The wagers spanned NFL, college football, baseball, soccer and hockey, and Kalshi collected fees of 3 to 78 cents on the trades, according to the filing.
Mansour, the CEO, and Lopes Lara, the COO, received court summonses rather than arrest warrants and are expected to respond in Utah’s Third District Court in Salt Lake County.
The criminal case is the sharpest step yet in a fight Utah has been winning in its own courts. On August 4, US District Judge Robert Shelby ruled that federal commodities law did not prevent Utah from enforcing its gambling statutes against the prediction market platform, and the Tenth Circuit denied Kalshi emergency protection on September 8. Utah Attorney General Derek Brown filed a separate civil suit on October 20 seeking roughly $30.6 million to $61.2 million in trading fees from Kalshi and two Susquehanna trading firms.
Brown said in a statement that gambling is illegal in Utah whether a person places the bet, runs the game or promotes it: “Calling it a ‘prediction market’ doesn’t change what it is, and being federally registered doesn’t put a company above the law.”
The charges also landed one day after the CFTC, with the US government, sued Utah to block state enforcement against federally regulated prediction markets, the 10th state the agency has taken to court. Kalshi, a CFTC-designated exchange since 2020, argues its sports contracts are federally regulated derivatives, not gambling. A spokesperson called the prosecution a “crazy overreach” and said Utah is “clearly playing politics,” adding the company expects to defeat the charges in court as it did in Arizona.
Kalshi’s response to the US Supreme Court on New Jersey’s petition in the wider dispute is due November 9.
