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Trump teleprompter operator fined $172,000 over prediction market bets
By Aurax Desk | August 29, 2026 | 2 min read
A former White House teleprompter operator has been ordered to pay $172,539 after federal regulators found he used advance access to President Donald Trump’s speeches to trade on the Kalshi prediction market. Gabriel Perez must surrender more than $107,000 in trading profits, pay a $65,000 civil penalty and observe a three-year ban on trading.
A former White House employee has been penalized for using confidential presidential speech information to trade on a prediction market.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Aug. 28 that Perez traded presidential “mention market” event contracts on Kalshi between December 2025 and February 2026 while working at the White House. The contracts allow traders to take positions on whether specific words or phrases will appear in presidential speeches. The CFTC found that Perez had access to Trump’s prepared remarks before they were delivered and used that nonpublic information to make profitable trades, generating $107,539.02. The agency ordered him to return those profits and imposed the additional civil penalty as part of a settlement.
Perez was previously placed on unpaid leave after reports of his trading emerged and is no longer working for the federal government. The CFTC said the civil penalty was reduced because of his cooperation with investigators and credited KalshiEX, the operator of the prediction market, with assisting in the case. Kalshi had detected unusual trading activity and referred the matter to federal regulators. The White House had also warned employees against using confidential government information to trade on prediction markets.
The case comes as prediction markets face growing scrutiny in the United States over how event contracts should be regulated and whether some markets constitute gambling rather than financial trading. Kalshi has argued that its contracts fall under federal commodities regulation, while several states have sought greater authority over its operations. On Aug. 28, a federal appeals court ruled that Nevada could apply its gambling regulations to Kalshi, creating a conflict with another federal appeals court's decision involving New Jersey and increasing uncertainty over the legal framework governing prediction markets.
Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, NBC News, CNN, BBC, The Washington Post and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
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