Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta

1h ago

Open on X

Utah sent an undercover agent to place about $115 in sports bets on Kalshi. Now the two people who started Kalshi are charged with 13 felonies, and the top charge alone carries up to 15 years in prison. The day after the charges came down, investors gave Kalshi $1 billion. Here's how the sting worked. In September, a special agent with the Utah attorney general's office opened a Kalshi account with a Utah address, a Utah phone number and a Utah debit card. Before his first bet, $10 on the Cowboys against the Giants, the app asked him to confirm his location. He told it he was in Utah, and it took his money. He did that 12 times over 11 days, on games like Utah vs. Utah State and a Real Salt Lake match. Kalshi's cut on each bet was somewhere between 3 and 78 cents. So the company made less than $10 off the bets Utah is now using to go after its CEO and COO personally. And that top charge comes from Utah's racketeering law, the same kind of statute prosecutors use on organized crime.…