Utah escalated its legal campaign against prediction market operator Kalshi on Wednesday, filing 14 criminal charges against KalshiEX LLC, CEO Tarek Mansour and co-founder Luana Lopes Lara for allegedly promoting illegal online sports gambling. The charges include 13 felonies and one misdemeanor, stemming from 12 sports wagers placed by an undercover investigator.
According to charging documents, Utah Attorney General’s Office agent Scott Eggerman opened a Kalshi account on September 13 using a Utah residential address, local phone number and debit card. After passing the platform’s geolocation check, he placed 12 wagers across NFL, college football, baseball, soccer and hockey events, risking a total of $114.87 and recording a net loss of $25.10. One trade involved Utah’s football game against Utah State on September 19; the agent bet $5 that Utah would win by more than 27.5 points, and Utah won by 36.
Attorney General Derek Brown said in a statement: “Gambling is illegal in Utah, whether you place the bet, run the game, or promote it. Calling it a ‘prediction market’ doesn’t change what it is.” Kalshi rejected the prosecution as a “crazy overreach” and said it expects to defeat the charges.
The criminal case follows a civil lawsuit Utah filed on October 20 against Kalshi and two Susquehanna trading firms, seeking between $30.6 million and $61.2 million in allegedly unlawful trading fees tied to more than three billion wagers associated with Utah accounts. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission separately sued Utah on October 27, arguing that federal commodities law gives it exclusive authority over regulated prediction-market contracts.
This is not the first state action: Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi in March, but a federal judge later blocked that prosecution. Utah’s earlier federal court effort was also rejected, and the Tenth Circuit denied emergency protection on September 8. Kalshi continues to dispute state authority while litigation over prediction-market jurisdiction proceeds in multiple courts.
