Paul Skalnik was one of the most prolific jailhouse snitches in American history. A new best-selling book, Catch the Devil, chronicles Skalnik's career helping prosecutors secure dozens of convictions—despite being a serial liar and criminal. His cartoonishly long rap sheet included elaborate frauds, multiple grand thefts, and sexual assault of a child; at various times, he passed himself off as a Southwest Airlines executive, a high-powered attorney, and a Vietnam War hero. In July, Reason's Billy Binion interviewed author Pamela Colloff, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and reporter at ProPublica.

Q: How is it possible for someone with such an intense history of dishonesty to still earn the state's trust for decades?

A: I think you hit upon the big question of the book, right? Skalnik was a former police officer himself, so he sort of knew how the game worked. When he got to whatever county jail he ended up in, he could size up whoever it was that prosecutors most wanted a conviction against. And he would produce these incredible quote-unquote "confessions." And in return for his testimony about those confessions, he would usually be let free.

You can imagine how there were police and prosecutors who bought this. I think what becomes more difficult as he's used more widely in [Pinellas County,] Florida—where he helped send upward of 40 men to prison—at what point does someone say, "What are the odds that this guy in the jail has a better batting record than our best detectives?" No one ever says that.

Q: The book covers a lot of disturbing cases, but the one central to it is a murder case in Florida. Can you set the scene?

A: There was a 14-year-old girl named Shelly Boggio who was found in a body of water. She'd been stabbed over 30 times, and the assumption was that she'd been sexually assaulted.

The investigation quickly narrows down to a man named Jack Pearcy, who had a long history of violence against women. He was the last person seen with Boggio. When he's interviewed by investigators, he realizes they know too much. So he pivots to saying that he had his housemate—Jim Dailey—with him that night, and that it was Jim who committed this crime. Jim did not have that kind of record, and there's no physical or forensic evidence tying him to the crime, or any motive whatsoever.

Skalnik is brought in very shortly before the trial starts. He is moved in the jail to be close to where Jim Dailey was. Within 24 hours, he says he has procured Dailey's confession—a total stranger who's awaiting trial. It was a story that really played upon jurors' sympathies. He talked about how Jim Dailey had supposedly told him about stabbing Shelly Boggio to death and how she'd been staring at him in this pleading way, but she wouldn't die. It's this horrific image, and he is sentenced to death.

Q: What makes you think Dailey is actually innocent?

A: There have been over 200 people in the U.S. who were sentenced to death who have since been exonerated. We know that jailhouse informants—who are notoriously unreliable—are a factor in 25 percent of those wrongful convictions.

As far as Jim's case, there's no there there. When you see a case with three jailhouse informants, no physical evidence, no motive, and your quote-unquote "eyewitness" is the main suspect in the case? There are a lot of questions.

Q: To me, the secondary theme was that when credible evidence may exonerate someone after a jury has rendered a verdict, it is depressingly difficult to get another chance.

A: I am obsessed with this idea that the system is built to compound its own errors. When new evidence comes out—and there's a lot of new evidence that comes out over the years that really points toward his innocence—you would think that would be enough. For some very good reasons, a jury verdict is sacrosanct. But what you see is that courts really look backward at precedent and jury verdicts rather than forward at new evidence.

Jim gets terrific attorneys in this case—too late. They do incredible work, and it doesn't matter. Too many judges have rubber-stamped this testimony by Paul Skalnik. There's no way for the courts to essentially say, "Hey, let's go back and look at this holistically and see if any of this makes sense." It was shocking to me to see that.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

The post Pamela Colloff on America's Biggest Jailhouse Snitch, Wrongful Convictions, and Criminal Justice appeared first on Reason Magazine.

"I think capitalism is a good thing, but I think what we need to contend with and be aware of is that a lot of people are not part of it," Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of prediction market platform Kalshi, recently told Reason's Nick Gillespie. "They don't feel like they're part of it. And that's a reality."

Mansour has set out to change that by making it easier for consumers to experience and participate in financial markets. Kalshi's premise is simple: Mansour says the platform matches traders with differing opinions on the outcome of future events, aggregating the "bits and pieces of information" siloed across the country, so long as that information isn't privileged or obtained illegally.

He's up against a rising number of federal and state lawmakers—not to mention the NFL, traditional sportsbooks, casinos, and other regulated gambling operations—who view Kalshi as yet another gambling app. "As of early 2026, more than 20 lawsuits and cease-and-desist actions are pending across the country, filed by state attorneys general, gaming regulators, tribal governments and private plaintiffs," according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This includes Utah, whose attorney general, Derek Brown, escalated an ongoing legal dispute with Kalshi on Tuesday by filing a complaint against the prediction market in state district court. In his complaint, Brown called Kalshi an "unconscionable and illegal gambling operation." He accused the company of engaging in a "brazen pattern of unlawful conduct."

At the federal level, Bloomberg Law reported last Friday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) is preparing to introduce a bill after the midterm elections that would give state and tribal governments authority to regulate sports-related event contracts offered by prediction markets. 

Cruz's state-by-state regulatory regime is exactly the kind of scheme Mansour wants lawmakers to avoid. Mansour recently told Reason that, ideally, there'd be a "federal uniform set of rules that apply across all 50 states." Those rules would then "promote and foster" a "multilateral, peer-to-peer idea," where, for example, someone in California, Oregon, or Washington could trade on an event's outcome based on information supplied by someone in Texas.

Data from the Pew Research Center show Kalshi is incredibly popular nationwide; however, the platform is facing headwinds in Congress from the likes of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) and  James Comer (R–Ky.) and Sens. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) and John Curtis (R–Utah), who have questioned whether prediction market platforms can indeed self-police insider trading and market manipulation. 

Mansour, who calls insider trading an "unfair dynamic that over time dries up liquidity," also argues that prediction markets are uniquely positioned to self-regulate because trades on Kalshi are "fully transparent," making it "easy to flag" suspicious trading patterns. The platform's users play a key role in that work. Mansour says that in February, when convicted fraudster and former Rep. George Santos (R–N.Y.) tried to engage in insider trading, Kalshi received "a hundred whistleblower complaints within a few minutes."

The company's public commitment to rooting out insider trading on its platform may be laudable. Still, it has done little to dispel the prevailing sentiment among state and federal regulators that Kalshi—and prediction market platforms writ large—is indistinguishable from traditional gambling markets. 

Indeed, the legal cases against Kalshi are centered on state regulators' belief that the platforms' sports event contracts are the same as the bets offered by legal gambling operations like casinos and sportsbooks. Kalshi has argued that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate the kinds of contracts it can offer under federal law, preempting states from exercising any gambling authority over prediction markets. 

In March, Arizona became the first state to file criminal charges against Kalshi. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes accused the company of "running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law." Not everyone in the state shares Mayes' view. One Arizona resident, Zach, a 35-year-old man who makes a living trading sports-related event contracts on prediction markets, tells Reason he'd "move to another state" if Arizona succeeds in driving out prediction markets. 

"There's nothing that is excluding other people from the profits that I'm making right now," he says. "I'm under no obligation to bet on Monday Night Football….I'm able to look at all the markets and decide which ones I want; I'm setting a limit order and just saying, 'OK, if I get my price, then hooray.' If I don't, then that's not something that I add to my portfolio."

Of course, not everyone acts as responsibly. Mansour knows that in any competition, including trading, "some people are going to win," while "some people lose." He believes in "individual freedom" and in the idea that "people should be able to choose" which financial markets they engage in, with "some regulations on irresponsible use" so that companies can't target people who exhibit addictive or destructive betting patterns. 

The degree to which Kalshi and other prediction market platforms should be regulated will likely be a high priority for federal lawmakers after the midterm elections and in the next Congress. Mansour appears optimistic that there's enough bipartisan support for what he calls "sensible guardrails." He says there's a "big group" on both sides of the aisle that's "actually pro" prediction market platforms. There's reason to be skeptical of Mansour's claim, given that several members of Congress—such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee—have said prediction markets need to be reined in.

In Mayes' case, her antipathy toward prediction markets might cost her at least one vote in Arizona's attorney general race. Zach says that with Mayes waging a legal battle against Kalshi, he'd have to take that into account "hypothetically, if someone knocked on my door tonight and they want me to vote for Kris Mayes to be reelected."

"If I'm not gonna vote on my own behalf, then who is, right?" he says. (Mayes might not be a fan of Kalshi, but with the platform's penchant for accurately predicting election winners, she can take solace in her current trading position, which shows an 84 percent chance she retains her position.)

Mansour says he's a "free market guy" who wants everyone to "have a shot in the competition." To succeed, he'll have to withstand a host of paternalistic government officials hell-bent on controlling financial decisions made by consenting adults.

The post Kalshi's CEO Wants 1 Set of Rules. The States Want 50. appeared first on Reason Magazine.