Gabriel Perez, a longtime White House teleprompter operator who improperly wagered on the spoken words of President Donald Trump using nonpublic speech drafts, has been ordered to pay $172,000 following an investigation by federal regulators and the prediction market platform Kalshi. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced the penalties late Friday, concluding an enforcement action that unspooled after surveillance systems flagged suspicious trading patterns on the prediction app.
Regulators Impose Fines and Trading Ban
According to the CFTC order, Perez generated $107,539.02 in profits by trading presidential “mention market” contracts between December 2025 and February 2026. These event contracts paid out based on whether the president uttered specific words or phrases during his public addresses. Under the terms of the settlement, Perez must return his entire financial gain and pay an additional civil monetary penalty of $65,000, bringing the total financial sanction to $172,000. In addition to the monetary penalties, the federal commission imposed a three-year ban preventing Perez from trading on prediction markets.
https://x.com/robertjdenault/status/2093494186012037157
The penalty structure reflects what the CFTC characterized as Perez’s “exemplary cooperation” throughout the investigation. Sources familiar with the inquiry noted that Perez sat for an interview with regulators in recent months and acknowledged executing the trades. While CFTC investigators alerted federal prosecutors in Manhattan at one point during the probe, those prosecutors ultimately declined to open a criminal investigation.
Detection and Internal White House Fallout
The scheme unraveled due to internal compliance monitoring on the platform where the bets were placed. Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s lead lawyer, detailed the discovery in a post on X, stating that a company surveillance investigation caught a White House staffer engaging in prohibited trading activity. Kalshi froze Perez’s account earlier this year—locking over $90,000 in accrued profits—and subsequently referred the case to the CFTC. According to Kalshi, the platform updated its user policies in June to require customers to disclose their place of employment.
Perez had worked for Trump since 2016, operating the teleprompter across both presidential terms and earning the title of technical adviser for the White House Office in January 2025. When news of the trades surfaced, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the conduct a breach of ethics and labeled it a disgrace. Perez was placed on unpaid administrative leave in July, with officials confirming at the time that he would no longer remain with the administration.
Scope of the Wagers
Investigators determined that Perez leveraged his direct access to presidential remarks prior to their delivery to place wagers on more than a dozen speeches across a three-month window. The illicit trading activity encompassed several high-profile addresses, including a December primetime speech, a January address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the February State of the Union address, and remarks delivered in March during a Medal of Honor ceremony.
