A former teleprompter operator for the White House has been ordered to forfeit more than $100,000 in profits and pay a $65,000 fine by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for using insider knowledge to bet on presidential speeches. Gabriel Perez also faces a three-year ban from trading as part of the agreement announced Friday.
Perez exploited his access to draft speeches to place bets on Kalshi's prediction markets, wagering on whether specific words and phrases would appear in Donald Trump's addresses. The CFTC found that Perez misappropriated this information, which he had access to in his role as a key technical assistant who had managed Trump's teleprompter scripts since 2016.
The scheme, which reportedly involved wagers on over a dozen presidential events between December 2025 and February 2026, was uncovered after Kalshi flagged suspicious trading activity. The platform allows users to bet on the occurrence of specific words, phrases, or topics in major public addresses.
Perez was placed on unpaid administrative leave from his White House position after reports of his activities emerged. He was later fired, with then-White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stating that Trump considered the situation "deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace."
Leavitt emphasized that the incident was the result of a "rogue actor" bypassing established protocols rather than a systemic failure. She affirmed that the White House has strict ethical guidelines prohibiting such actions and that the mechanism for detecting the behavior, initiated by Kalshi's notification to the CFTC, operated as intended.
The CFTC reduced Perez's civil penalty due to his "exemplary cooperation" during the investigation. The commission ordered him to repay his illicit gains in full, alongside the $65,000 fine. Perez's role involved managing the teleprompter for Trump's speeches, dating back to his first presidential campaign in 2016.