Ex-White House teleprompter operator to pay $172,000 to settle CFTC probe
White House Teleprompter Operator Settles Prediction-Market Probe for $172,000
Tyunews.com – The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced late Friday that Gabriel Perez, a longtime technical assistant to the president who has managed Donald Trump's teleprompter since 2016, will pay $172,000 to resolve allegations that he used insider knowledge of upcoming presidential remarks to profit from event-contract trading on the prediction platform Kalshi. The settlement includes returning more than $100,000 in winnings, paying a $65,000 civil penalty, and accepting a three-year ban from trading on regulated markets.
The case has drawn attention to a growing intersection between government roles and the rapidly expanding prediction-market industry, where participants wager on the outcomes of real-world events. Perez's situation raised questions about whether staff with privileged access to nonpublic information should be permitted to place bets on outcomes they are uniquely positioned to influence or anticipate.
The Allegations
According to the commission's order, Perez traded what Kalshi calls "presidential mention market contracts" between December 2025 and February 2026. These event contracts reflect specific words or phrases the president may use during scheduled speeches. Because Perez's job required him to load and verify the exact text of each address before it was delivered, he possessed detailed knowledge of upcoming language well before the public heard it.
"The order finds that between December 2025 and February 2026, we're working as a teleprompter operator for the White House, Perez traded presidential mention market contracts, which are event contracts reflecting words or phrases the President may use during his speeches."
The commission stated that Perez generated over $107,500 in profits from these trades. The order characterized his conduct as a misappropriation of information held in breach of a duty of trust and confidence owed to his employer.
Scope of the Trading
Investigators identified bets placed on more than a dozen separate Trump speeches across roughly a three-month window. Among the events targeted were a December primetime address, a January appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the February State of the Union address, and remarks delivered during a March Medal of Honor ceremony. Each of these events carried a predictable schedule, giving Perez advance notice of both the timing and the content of the remarks.
Sources familiar with the investigation indicated that Perez sat for an interview with CFTC staff in recent months and acknowledged some of the trades. At a later stage, the commission notified federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who declined to open a criminal investigation.
Settlement Terms and Cooperation Credit
The $172,000 total breaks down into the return of winnings plus the $65,000 penalty. The commission noted that the penalty figure represents a "significant discount" attributable to Perez's "exemplary cooperation with the CFTC" throughout the inquiry. The three-year trading ban will prevent him from participating in regulated event-contract or futures markets during that period.
White House Response and Internal Ethics Measures
Following initial reporting on the matter last month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave. The administration emphasized that it maintains strict ethics guidelines governing staff conduct, including restrictions on the use of nonpublic information for personal financial gain.
In March, the White House issued an internal memo specifically warning employees against leveraging nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets. The memo came amid growing staff familiarity with platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, where users can wager on everything from election outcomes to specific words spoken by public figures.
Prediction-Market Context and Platform Policies
Kalshi, the platform at the center of this case, maintains a policy prohibiting users from trading on information obtained through their employment. In June, the company updated its rules to require users to disclose their place of employment, a step designed to surface potential conflicts of interest before trades are executed. The Perez matter underscores why such disclosures matter: a teleprompter operator's knowledge of exact speech language is precisely the kind of granular, time-sensitive information that gives an edge in mention markets.
The broader implications extend beyond one individual. As prediction markets grow in scale and attract participants from fields ranging from finance to government service, regulators and employers face increasing pressure to define clear boundaries around insider information. The CFTC's action here signals that event-contract trading will be scrutinized under the same fiduciary and misappropriation principles that govern traditional securities markets, even when the underlying "asset" is a single word spoken from a podium.
The settlement closes what had been a closely watched regulatory matter, but it leaves open questions about how many other government employees with access to nonpublic schedules, documents, or remarks may be participating in prediction markets without formal disclosure. For now, the commission's order stands as a precedent: access to privileged information creates duties, and trading on that access without authorization carries financial and professional consequences.
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