Written by: Nicky, Foresight News
On July 16, reports from CNBC and ABC stated that a longtime teleprompter operator for U.S. President Trump is under federal investigation for allegedly using insider information to place bets on a prediction market platform, and the White House has suspended him.
On March 27, 2026, in Miami Beach, Florida, Perez cleans the teleprompter before Trump's speech at the Future Investment Initiative Summit.
The individual involved, Gabriel Perez, has been operating the teleprompter for Trump since 2016. He typically has the last contact with and adjusts the president's speeches among all aides and even receives on-the-spot edits from Trump himself. According to sources cited by ABC and CNBC, investigators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found that Perez traded on over 12 of Trump's public speeches over a period of about three months, covering events such as the State of the Union address, the World Economic Forum speech in Davos, prime time addresses, and the Medal of Honor ceremony.
He used advance knowledge of the speech content to bet on the Kalshi platform's "Mentions" market, wagering whether specific words, phrases, or topics would be spoken, and sometimes withdrawing bets midway through speeches when Trump skipped parts of the script.
Perez's trades were detected by Kalshi's monitoring system in March of this year, as the related patterns did not align with typical buying and selling behavior and were additionally flagged by market makers through reporting channels. The platform subsequently froze his account, withheld nearly all of his earnings, and referred the case to the CFTC. Kalshi's enforcement director, Robert DeNault, stated through CNBC that the monitoring team quickly flagged these trades, the platform is cooperating with regulators and has submitted the evidence collected.
CNBC reported that Perez earned over $90,000, but most of his earnings have been frozen by Kalshi. Perez is currently in settlement negotiations with the CFTC and may face the return of all profits, along with a ban on engaging in similar trades. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office has been informed of the matter but has decided not to initiate a criminal investigation.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed at a press conference that Perez has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, is no longer responsible for operating the teleprompter, and will not continue working at the White House. According to CNBC, Leavitt revealed that Trump is aware of the situation and considers it "very unfortunate, simply a shame," and made the relevant decision personally. Leavitt emphasized that the White House has extremely strict ethical guidelines, and a memo was specifically issued internally in March warning staff not to use non-public information for trading in prediction markets.
The Perez case is not an isolated incident. As early as May 2025, California gubernatorial candidate Kyle Langford engaged in about $200 worth of trades in markets related to his campaign, earning very little but ultimately being fined $2,246 and banned from the platform for five years. From August to September 2025, a video editor, Artem Kaptur, who used insider knowledge about programming schedules, was flagged for an unusually high win rate, earning about $5,400, and in addition to the profit recovery was fined an extra $15,000 and banned for two years.
In February 2026, former Congressman George Santos bet that he would not attend Trump’s State of the Union address, while publicly committing to attend, earning tens of thousands of dollars. His account was then frozen and referred to regulatory and judicial authorities. In April of the same year, three congressional candidates were penalized for small bets in their own election-related markets and faced fines ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, with a five-year ban imposed on them. Even small profits or unwithdrawn earnings face platform penalties and regulatory accountability for insider trading.
Image source: Internet
Another major prediction market platform, Polymarket, has also experienced similar serious violations. According to previous reports by CNBC, U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke utilized confidential information to buy large amounts of contracts in Polymarket related to the military operation to capture former Venezuelan president Maduro, earning over $400,000, and was arrested in April of this year facing criminal and civil insider trading charges. In May of the same year, Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo was indicted for trading in Polymarket using company internal "annual search trend" data from October to December 2025, earning about $1.2 million.
The repeated occurrence of insider trading in prediction markets stems from the ability of information advantages to quickly translate into excess returns, while some topical markets have already achieved a noteworthy funding scale. For example, the topic on the Kalshi platform about "Which companies will Trump mention in July" has seen trading volumes exceed $150,000. High liquidity markets provide ample profit space for insiders, while ordinary users remain at a disadvantage due to information asymmetry, thereby damaging market price fairness and platform credibility.
In response to these irregularities, platforms and regulators are attempting multiple measures to curb them. Kalshi has recently updated its policy to require traders in specific markets to disclose occupational information and has relied on KYC procedures, round-the-clock abnormal trading detection, and reporting channels to strengthen preventive measures. In the first quarter of this year, the platform initiated over 150 investigations, froze more than 100 potential suspicious transactions, and referred over 20 cases to law enforcement.
On the regulatory front, the CFTC has repeatedly cited regulations prohibiting the misuse of non-public information and market manipulation in recent enforcement actions, and is collaborating with the Department of Justice to advance criminal accountability, making behaviors that involve trading based on government internal information or corporate data subject to serious charges such as fraud or money laundering, with potential for years of imprisonment. The White House has also made it clear through internal memos that government employees are prohibited from participating in such betting.
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