Gabriel Perez, a White House employee who has long served as a teleprompter operator for Donald Trump, is accused of using access to presidential speech drafts to place trades on Kalshi’s “mention markets,” generating nearly $100,000 in profits. NPR reported that Perez is in settlement talks with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while Kalshi has frozen about $90,000 tied to the gains.
The report describes it as the first case in the history of U.S. prediction markets to directly involve alleged insider trading by a White House insider.
How Kalshi’s mention markets work
Mention markets are a type of contract on Kalshi that lets traders bet on whether a public figure, especially the president, will say a specific word during a speech, press conference, or another public appearance.
For Trump’s national address on the evening of July 16, traders had already placed more than $800,000 on contracts tied to whether he would say words such as “Hormuz,” “rigged election,” and “fake news.”
Perez’s role and the CFTC’s view
Perez has worked as a teleprompter operator in Trump’s orbit since 2016. His title is listed as “Deputy Assistant to the President and Technical Advisor,” and his annual salary is $175,000. Because he could review speech content before it became public, the CFTC determined that the information was enough to give him a systematic advantage in mention markets.
Trump publicly praised Perez, whom he called by the nickname Gabe, during a 2024 rally in Reno, Nevada. Trump said, “I have a great guy Gabe, I’ve had some really bad ones before, Gabe is good, like gold.”
Kalshi flagged the trading and notified regulators
Robert DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, said: “Our surveillance team quickly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC following an internal investigation. We are cooperating with regulators and providing the evidence we collected, as we do in any referral matter.”
According to the report, Kalshi’s internal monitoring system first detected unusual betting patterns in Trump-related mention markets. A review of the account then found that the trader was a federal employee. Kalshi froze about $90,000 in profits, permanently banned Perez’s account, and the CFTC then formally opened its investigation.
White House response and possible legal exposure
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave and called the conduct “disgraceful.”
Beyond the CFTC’s civil inquiry, NPR cited legal analysts as saying that using nonpublic information to profit in prediction markets could also raise potential federal criminal exposure, including wire fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.
A new case as prediction markets expand
Prediction markets have grown quickly in recent months, and both Kalshi and Polymarket have already seen several prominent insider-trading cases. The report also referenced a May article by Chain News about a Google engineer who used insider information to make $1.2 million on Polymarket. The Perez case, however, is described as the first one to directly point to a White House insider.