By Anirban Sen
NEW YORK, May 29 (Reuters) - Kalshi has hired former FBI official Tyler Neff on its surveillance team, as part of a broader effort to ramp up safeguards on its exchange at a time when prediction markets are facing increased pressure from lawmakers to crack down on insider trading on their exchanges.
• Neff joined Kalshi earlier in May, according to a post on LinkedIn. He reports to the company's head of enforcement and legal counsel, Robert DeNault, and will be part of a team responsible
for all surveillance efforts, a spokeswoman for Kalshi said.
• Neff previously served as an intel analyst on a white-collar crime squad at the New York field office of the FBI for seven years. His role at the law enforcement agency was followed by stints at the New York Stock Exchange, Wedbush Securities, and Canaccord Genuity.
• Kalshi has ramped up hiring on its surveillance unit this year, tapping a handful of other executives from Wall Street financial institutions like Morgan Stanley and Nasdaq.
• The latest moves come as top prediction markets have witnessed a surge in suspicious trades in recent months. Since the start of this year, Kalshi has probed and flagged more than 400 suspicious trades, more than twice the number of trades that the platform investigated all of last year, Reuters reported earlier in May.
• Earlier this week, the U.S. Justice Department charged a Google software engineer with using insider information to rig bets tied to Google's most-searched list on Polymarket.
(Reporting by Anirban Sen in New YorkEditing by Nick Zieminski)
