Gabriel Perez, formerly a White House teleprompter operator, has agreed to pay $170,000 to settle allegations of insider trading with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This settlement resolves claims that Perez used confidential information about former President Donald Trump's speeches to profit from bets placed on the prediction market platform Kalshi. The agreement requires Perez to disgorge $100,000 in profits and pay a civil penalty of $70,000.
Perez, who served as a technical assistant to the president and operated Trump's teleprompter since 2016, was accused of making over $100,000 by betting on specific words, phrases, or topics that would be mentioned during Trump's public appearances. Kalshi's "Mentions" market allowed users to wager on these linguistic outcomes. Investigations by the CFTC found that Perez placed bets on more than a dozen of Trump's speeches over a three-month period, including the State of the Union address, a December primetime address, and remarks at the World Economic Forum.
Kalshi initiated the investigation by flagging Perez's unusual trading activity to the CFTC and subsequently froze more than $90,000 in his account. The company's surveillance systems detected betting patterns that deviated from typical behavior, and upon examination, revealed Perez's identity as a federal employee. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated in July that Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave, with President Trump reportedly finding the situation a "disgrace."
Perez had acknowledged some of the trades during an interview with regulators. While federal prosecutors in Manhattan were alerted, they declined to open a criminal investigation. The settlement with the CFTC mandates Perez to return his ill-gotten gains and refrain from similar trading activities in the future. This marks a significant enforcement action in the burgeoning prediction market space, where the misuse of non-public government information for financial gain is prohibited and considered a serious offense.
