Original ｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author ｜Golem (@web3_golem)

Recently, another insider trading scandal has been exposed at the White House.

A White House staff member made a profit of $100,000 through insider information trading in the prediction market, and the true identity of this insider is just an operator who has been responsible for Trump's teleprompter for a long time. That employee has now been suspended and denied pay.

This teleprompter operator has become the third insider revealed by the U.S. Department of Justice to have made substantial profits using insider information in the prediction markets, following the special forces involved in the capture operation of Maduro and a Google security engineer. (Related reading: "After 4 months, Polymarket helped Trump catch the military operation leaker, but the cost was..." and "Seeing the answer and handing in the paper early? Google engineer caught up in Polymarket insider trading case")

Reported by Kalshi, funds frozen, but ultimately not held criminally responsible

The protagonist is named Gabriel Perez, who has been responsible for operating Trump's teleprompter since 2016. Perez's experience of getting this job is also quite dramatic; in 2016, Trump's campaign team urgently needed a teleprompter operator, so they found Perez's company while searching for "teleprompter" on Google, and Perez was hired by the Trump team.

Gabriel Perez

Although Perez was accidentally hired, over these 10 years, he gradually became one of Trump's closest aides. Politico even stated, "Perez has become the only person Trump trusts," as he often accepts last-minute changes to public speeches directly from Trump himself.

Therefore, Perez became one of the few people who could access Trump's complete speech texts in advance and had the final say on almost all prepared speeches. This power is not insignificant; Perez's official title at the White House is Deputy Assistant to the President and Technical Advisor, with an annual salary of $175,000, only $20,000 less than senior staff like Chief of Staff Susie Wilks and Press Secretary Caroline Levitt.

Such salary levels are considered high-income in the United States, but the greedy Perez was still not satisfied.

As prediction markets became popular, numerous players began betting on which specific words Trump would "mention" in a certain speech. Perez realized that the "privilege" he held could bring him even more wealth.

CFTC investigators found that Perez had placed bets on Trump's speeches over about three months, with total profits exceeding $100,000. This included Trump's primetime speech last December, his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, the State of the Union Address in February, and Trump's remarks at the Medal of Honor ceremony in March.

The statutory annual salary for the U.S. President is $400,000, and with various allowances, the president can receive about $569,000 each year. If Perez hadn't been caught, then with his speed of making $100,000 in three months, although his power is not as great as the president's, his annual income would exceed the president's annual salary.

However, even with prior knowledge of the speech content, Perez could not always successfully predict which words Trump would mention in his speeches, as Trump often deviates from the script to "improvise." When Trump skipped over a word that Perez had bet on during a speech, he would immediately sell to cut losses. Trump personally acknowledged in his speech in January at the Detroit Economic Club that he does not look at the teleprompter 80% of the time.

Like the special forces and the Google security engineer, Perez's exposure also stemmed from a proactive report by the prediction market platform. Perez frequently used Kalshi for insider trading; starting in March of this year, Kalshi's monitoring system discovered some abnormal trades related to specific words mentioned in Trump's speeches, thus paying attention to Perez.

After the internal investigation was completed, Kalshi quickly froze over $90,000 in Perez's account and handed it over to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). After hearing about the matter, Trump commented, "This is disgraceful," and personally decided to suspend Perez and withhold his salary during the suspension.

Perez, due to greed, ultimately lost both his fortune and his job; he not only could not recover his profits in the prediction market but also failed to keep his original job. However, compared to the special forces and Google security engineer, Perez is somewhat fortunate, as U.S. judicial authorities did not charge him with a criminal lawsuit, and Perez does not have to go to jail.

During the investigation, the CFTC had notified the federal prosecutors in Manhattan, but the prosecutors refused to launch a criminal investigation. According to insiders, CFTC regulators have expressed willingness to reach a settlement with Perez and have discussed related terms with him, resulting in a requirement for Perez to return his profits while stopping similar trading.

Perez is just the beginning of clearing out insider trading in the "mention" market

The reason Perez doesn't have to go to jail is that prosecutors believe he does not constitute a criminal offense, as he neither leaked important government information in advance nor posed a threat to national security. As Trump said, "This is just disgraceful," damaging the integrity image of government personnel.

In March of this year, the White House warned staff against betting on prediction markets using non-public information, with White House spokesperson Davis Ingle stating, "The White House has strict ethical standards, and we expect all staff and officials to abide by these standards."

However, Perez is definitely not the only staff member in the White House who has profited from insider information; Trump, who openly charges fees for personal groups, has even less right to comment on this teleprompter operator (Related reading: "$100,000 a month, Trump has started selling “Alpha”").

No wonder Perez could not resist temptation; the "mention" market in prediction markets is indeed the easiest category to manipulate artificially. When the cost of participation for insiders is pushed to a very low level and the potential returns are extremely high, it is no longer a moral issue but a mechanism design issue. In the face of interests, even seemingly upright and just politicians cannot guarantee that they will never cross that line.

The gameplay of the "mention" market allows users to bet on specific words, phrases, or topics that will be mentioned in public speeches. Compared to other events (like political elections, sports events, etc.), the cheating costs in the "mention" market are extremely low. Not only for persons like Perez who can know the speech content in advance, for the speaker themselves, cheating can be as simple as a single word, materializing the old saying "a word worth a thousand gold."

At the Grammy Awards last February, host Trevor Noah, after saying "Welcome back to the Grammys," suddenly shouted "Potato." While everyone was taken aback, Trevor Noah continued, "If you bet on Polymarket that I would say this word, you just made a fortune," congratulating a user "Noah 22." However, in fact, "potato" was not an option in Polymarket's prediction about what would be mentioned at the Grammy Awards, and the user "noah-22" was purely fictional.

The Grammy host shouting potato at the awards ceremony

Afterwards, some analysis suggested this might be a marketing activity from Polymarket, but it already reflected the control over the "mention" market by the person involved.

Another more direct example is that in October 2025, during Coinbase's third-quarter earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong noted that he noticed many people betting in the prediction markets on what he would mention during the call, so he opened Polymarket and read through all the options, ultimately leading to a result where all outcomes had a 100% probability, ending in a tie.

The above are just two examples demonstrating the control individuals have over the "mention" market; certainly, many people who actually profit from this are hidden beneath the surface. However, as regulatory scrutiny of prediction markets gradually deepens, it is likely that all insiders in the "mention" market will also be cleared, with Perez being merely a beginning.

Last month, Kalshi updated its policy, requiring users to disclose their workplaces. Kalshi's enforcement head Bobby DeNault explained that the rationale behind this is, "If you possess certain information due to your work or employment relationship and you have relevant legal responsibilities, then you are obliged not to take that information for yourself or use it for personal purposes." Polymarket has not yet imposed such strict disclosure requirements on users, but in the increasingly competitive and compliant landscape of prediction markets, I believe that Polymarket's stricter compliance requirements will come soon.

From special forces, Google engineers to White House teleprompter operators, prediction markets are gradually clearing up insider trading. At the same time, the market is experiencing a process of demystifying prediction markets, which were initially thought to reflect the wisdom of the crowd, but in reality, they are merely cash cows for a few insiders.

Although clearing up insider trading will make prediction markets more compliant, it also brings them further away from the truth and closer to being pure casinos.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。