White House Teleprompter Operator Fined $172,000 for Betting on Trump Speeches Using Inside Knowledge
A federal regulator says Gabriel Perez used his privileged access to the president's words before they were spoken to place winning wagers on an online prediction market.
Key points
- Gabriel Perez, a former White House teleprompter operator, was fined $172,000 by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2025.
- Perez placed bets on Kalshi, an online prediction market where users wager real money on the outcome of real-world events, predicting specific words President Trump would use in speeches.
- The CFTC said Perez used "material, nonpublic information", meaning facts not available to the public, gained through his government role.
- Perez left his White House post after the accusations surfaced.
Gabriel Perez had a job most people never think about: he loaded the words the President of the United States was about to read onto a teleprompter. That access, the CFTC now says, was also the basis for a personal gambling scheme.
The CFTC is the federal agency that oversees financial trading in commodities and certain other markets, including prediction markets, where people bet money on whether specific real-world events will happen. Kalshi is one such platform, legal in the United States, where users can wager on questions like whether a politician will use a certain word in a speech.
How did the betting scheme work?
Perez knew what Trump was going to say before anyone else outside the room did. He used that foreknowledge to place bets on Kalshi, predicting whether the president would use particular words in his addresses.
Think of it as betting on a horse race after you already know which horse won. Everyone else on the platform was guessing. Perez was not.
The CFTC's formal term for this is trading on "material, nonpublic information", the same legal concept that underpins insider trading rules in the stock market. The commission said Perez acted "for his personal benefit" and announced the $172,000 fine on Friday, as first reported by The Guardian.
Does this affect ordinary people?
Directly, no. No personal data was stolen. No passwords were exposed.
But the case matters for anyone who uses prediction markets or cares about fair financial markets. When one person bets with information nobody else can access, every other bettor on that platform is at a structural disadvantage without knowing it. The playing field was tilted.
It is also a reminder that insider-information rules are not limited to stock trading. The CFTC has now made clear it will apply the same logic to prediction markets.
| Detail | Fact |
|---|---|
| Person fined | Gabriel Perez |
| Role | White House teleprompter operator |
| Platform used | Kalshi |
| Regulator | Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) |
| Fine amount | $172,000 |
| Basis for fine | Trading on material, nonpublic information |
Common questions
Could stronger security controls have stopped this?
Possibly. Policies restricting government employees from trading on platforms where their work gives them a direct edge, combined with financial-disclosure requirements, are the clearest preventive tool here. Technology alone would not have caught it.
Is Kalshi itself in trouble?
The CFTC action targets Perez personally, not the platform. Kalshi operates legally under CFTC oversight, and nothing in the announcement suggests the company facilitated the scheme knowingly.
