Ex-White House teleprompter operator fined $172,000 for Trump speech bets

A White House teleprompter operator who left his post amid accusations that he used inside knowledge to make bets on Donald Trump’s speeches on an online prediction market has been fined $172,000, according to federal regulators.Gabriel Perez exploited “material, nonpublic information” that he gathered through his work for the president in order to place wagers on the Kalshi platform “for his personal benefit”, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) maintained in a news release on Friday.The CFTC ordered Perez to both “disgorge the profits he made from his unlawful [conduct]” totaling $107,539.02 and to pay a civil penalty of $65,000, the agency’s news release said. Such amounts represented “a substantial discount”, the CFTC added, attributing that to what the agency called “Perez’s exemplary cooperation” with its investigation into him.According to the CFTC, from December to February while working as a White House teleprompter operator, Perez made bets on Kalshi tied to words or phrases that Trump might make during his speeches. Perez’s White House role gave him access to those speeches before the president delivered them, and he “misappropriated that information” to profit, breaching “his duty of trust and confidence”, the CFTC asserted.Perez – beside being fined – “agreed to cease and desist from further violations” of federal laws prohibiting market manipulation and CFTC regulations, the CFTC said. He was also handed a three-year trading ban.The CFTC issued its news release about Perez on Friday, about a month after the White House said he no longer had his job there. It was unclear whether Perez resigned or was fired.Yet his departure came after he was reportedly put on unpaid leave amid an investigation into whether he had used his inside knowledge to win more than $100,000 betting on what Trump would say on big occasions, including his State of the Union address in February. The White House press secretary at the time, Karoline Leavitt, had described the reports of insider trading by Perez as “deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace”.Perez earned an annual salary of $175,000 for his teleprompter work, according to White House personnel records.The case centering on Perez was only the latest to illustrate the continued proliferation of online prediction markets, which allow users to place speculative bets on public events and trends. That has evidently incentivized insider trading.For instance, about four months before Perez’s fine, federal prosecutors indicted US soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke for allegedly making a $400,000 bet on Kalshi rival platform Polymarket about whether Nicolás Maduro would be removed from Venezuela’s presidency. Van Dyke had worked on the operation to remove Maduro and extradite him to the US on drug-trafficking charges, according to prosecutors.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFurthermore, Kalshi in April also announced fines against three political candidates who bet on their own elections, including one who wagered on whether he would run for office before announcing an independent campaign for a US Senate seat in Virginia.Trump has defended the prediction market industry, to which his family has business ties. He has advocated against individual US states regulating those markets and has argued that the CFTC should instead carry out that function.In its news release on Perez’s fine, meanwhile, the CFTC made it a point to thank Kalshi for its “assistance … in this matter”.