Utah Files 14 Criminal Charges Against Kalshi and Its Co-Founders Over Sports Event Contracts

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown filed 14 criminal charges on 28 October 2026 against prediction market operator Kalshi and its co-founders, chief executive Tarek Mansour and chief operating officer Luana Lopes Lara, accusing them of promoting illegal online gambling to Utah residents through sports event contracts. The case follows the criminal charges Arizona brought against Kalshi in March 2026 and goes further by naming the two founders personally.

The charges are allegations. Kalshi, Mansour and Lopes Lara have not been convicted of anything and are presumed innocent. Kalshi called the case "a crazy overreach" and said Utah "is clearly playing politics," according to KUER, Salt Lake City's public radio station.

What the charges say

The complaint, filed in state court in Salt Lake County, lists 13 felony counts and one misdemeanor against KalshiEX LLC, the company's federally registered exchange, and the two founders.

GamblingNews reports that no arrest warrants were issued and that both founders were summoned to appear in the Third District Court. The attorney general's office had not published the charging document on its newsroom page by 29 October; the details above come from local and trade reporting of the filing.

Brown framed the case around the bet, not the label. "Gambling is illegal in Utah, whether you place the bet, run the game, or promote it," he said, as quoted by The Block.

The undercover bets

The criminal case rests on a single investigation. In September 2026, an investigator from the attorney general's office opened a Kalshi account with a Utah address, phone number and locally issued debit card, according to KUER and GamblingNews.

Over roughly two weeks the investigator placed 12 sports wagers, one for each online gambling promotion count. GamblingNews puts the total staked at $114.87 with a net loss of $25.10, spread across the NFL, college football, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and an NHL game between the Utah Mammoth and the Colorado Avalanche.

The timing matters to Utah's argument. The bets were placed after a federal judge ruled that the state's gambling ban applies to Kalshi, which Brown says shows the company "kept taking bets from Utahns anyway."

How Utah got here

Utah is one of the few US states with no legal gambling of any kind; its constitution bars the legislature from authorizing it. The dispute with Kalshi has moved from federal court to civil and now criminal enforcement in under nine months.

The civil suit, announced by Brown's office on 20 October, asks a state court to stop Kalshi taking bets from Utah residents on sports, elections and other outcomes. Brown said then that Kalshi "runs an online casino in Utah and calls it a prediction market." Days later, as covered in our report on Kalshi's federal lawsuit against Louisiana, the exchange operator Nadex also sued Utah's attorney general.

The CFTC's counter-suit

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that supervises futures and derivatives exchanges, sued Utah on 27 October seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Its release says Utah "seeks to shut down prediction markets across a wide variety of markets," and that the CFTC will defend "its exclusive jurisdiction over commodity derivatives," in the words of Chairman Michael Selig.

The agency says it has started proceedings against nine other states, making Utah the tenth. Its suit targets the civil action; the criminal charges followed a day later. The federal regulator's stance on event contracts has divided opinion for some time, and its decision to sue states directly turns that disagreement into litigation.

A widening state fight over prediction markets

Utah's move escalates a fight in which most states see sports event contracts as unlicensed sports betting. Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi in March 2026; a federal judge blocked that case, and Arizona is now trying to revive it after the Ninth Circuit ruled for Nevada, KUER reports. Kalshi said it expects to end the Utah case "in court, just like we did in Arizona."

Regulators elsewhere are using licensing pressure instead. Ohio has told gaming licensees to cut ties with prediction markets, and Michigan, which began investigating sports prediction markets in 2025, has secured Polymarket's agreement to stop offering sports contracts there by late November. The federal appeals courts are split, with Maryland's case still pending and New Jersey asking the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question.

What happens next

The founders' first court appearance on the summons will be the next step in the criminal case. In parallel, the CFTC's suit, Kalshi's Tenth Circuit appeal and Utah's civil case will test whether a federally registered exchange can be prosecuted under a state gambling ban. A Supreme Court ruling on the New Jersey petition would likely decide that question for every state.

Status reviewed on 29 October 2026. Charge counts and investigation details are from reporting of the charging document; the attorney general's office and the CFTC were the primary sources for the civil suit, the August ruling and the federal lawsuit. More legal news and North America coverage.