Ex-White House teleprompter operator to pay $172,000 to settle CFTC probe

A former longtime White House teleprompter operator will pay $172,000 to settle a regulator's allegations that he improperly wagered on the words President Donald Trump would utter during speeches, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced late Friday. 

Gabriel Perez, who regulators claimed made more than $100,000 on Kalshi's so-called "mention markets," will return those winnings and pay a $65,000 penalty, the commission said in a press release.

Under the commission's order, a three-year trading ban is also imposed on Perez.

"The order finds that between December 2025 and February 2026, while working as a teleprompter operator for the White House, Perez traded presidential mention market contracts, which are event contracts reflecting words or phrases the President may use during his speeches," the CFTC said in the release. "In his position, Perez had access to presidential speeches prior to those speeches being delivered and Perez misappropriated that information--in breach of his duty of trust and confidence--to trade presidential mention market contracts, generating over $107,500 in profits."

The commission said the penalty Perez will pay represents a "significant discount" due to his "exemplary cooperation with the CFTC."

ABC News first reported last month that Perez, a technical assistant to the president who has been operating Trump's teleprompter since 2016, was accused of having made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump's speeches and was in talks with federal regulators to settle the allegations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, following ABC News' report, that Perez had been put on unpaid administrative leave.

The White House said it has strict ethics guidelines that staffers are expected to follow. In March, the White House issued an internal memo warning staff against using nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets, sources previously confirmed to ABC News.

In addition to February's State of the Union address, sources said CFTC investigators allegedly discovered that Perez placed bets on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period, including a December primetime address, a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Trump's remarks in March during a Medal of Honor ceremony.

According to sources familiar with the investigation, Perez sat for an interview with regulators in recent months and acknowledged some of the trades. At some point during the investigation, the sources said the CFTC alerted federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who declined to open a criminal investigation.

Kalshi has a policy against users trading based on information obtained as part of their jobs.

In June, the company updated its policies to require users to disclose their place of employment.