Ex-White House Teleprompter Operator Penalised for Betting on Trump Speech Details

A former White House teleprompter operator has been ordered to surrender more than $107,000 in profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty after federal regulators found that he used confidential information from President Donald Trump’s speeches to place bets on a prediction market.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced the settlement involving Gabriel Perez, who previously worked as a teleprompter operator and technical adviser at the White House. The settlement also imposes a three-year ban on trading.

According to the CFTC, Perez had advance access to presidential speeches and used information from those unreleased remarks to trade contracts on Kalshi, a prediction-market platform. The contracts allowed traders to bet on whether particular words or phrases would be mentioned in Trump’s speeches.

Regulators said Perez earned approximately $107,539 through the trades between December 2025 and February 2026, exploiting information that was not publicly available at the time.

Under the settlement, Perez must surrender the full amount of his trading profits and pay an additional $65,000 penalty, bringing his total financial liability to about $172,539.

The CFTC said the penalty was reduced because Perez provided what it described as “exemplary cooperation” during the investigation. He also agreed to stop violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.

The case first came to public attention in July after suspicious trading activity involving Perez was reported. Kalshi’s surveillance system had flagged the trades, and the company froze his account before he could withdraw all of the profits. The platform subsequently referred the matter to the CFTC and cooperated with investigators.

Perez was placed on unpaid leave from the White House after the allegations emerged. A White House official later confirmed that he was no longer working in his previous position, although officials did not clarify whether he had been fired or resigned.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously described the conduct as “unfortunate” and “a disgrace.”

The case highlights growing scrutiny surrounding prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, particularly over the possibility that people with access to confidential government, corporate or political information could use that knowledge to gain an unfair advantage.