A Former White House Teleprompter Operator Made $107,539 Trading on Trump’s Unspoken Words, CFTC Says

A presidential speech can move markets. For one White House teleprompter operator, federal regulators say the value was even more literal: knowing the words before they were spoken produced $107,539.02 in prediction-market profits.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced on August 28 that Gabriel Perez must surrender those profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty after settling charges that he used confidential government information to trade contracts tied to President Donald Trump’s speeches.

The total financial order comes to $172,539.02. Perez also agreed to a three-year trading ban and to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.

The trades depended on words Trump had not said yet

Between December 2025 and February 2026, Perez worked as a White House teleprompter operator, a position that gave him access to presidential speeches before Trump delivered them, according to the CFTC order.

Perez traded what the agency calls presidential “mention market” contracts. Those event contracts pay based on whether a president uses a particular word or phrase during a speech. The CFTC said Perez took the nonpublic information entrusted to him and used it for his own benefit, breaching a duty of trust and confidence.

The agency’s press release describes the conduct as insider trading of event contracts. In this case, the inside information was not a quarterly earnings report or merger plan. It was the language prepared for public remarks—and the potential edge came from seeing that language before everyone else.

The Associated Press and Reuters independently reported the settlement and the same central figures: $107,539.02 in disgorgement, a $65,000 penalty and a three-year ban.

Why the penalty was not larger

The CFTC said the $65,000 civil penalty represented a substantial reduction because of Perez’s “exemplary cooperation” with the investigation. That discount did not erase the profits: the order requires him to give up the full amount the agency attributed to the unlawful trades.

The regulator also thanked KalshiEX for assisting with the matter. Kalshi operates the prediction-market platform where the contracts were traded.

AP reported that Perez was placed on unpaid leave after the activity came under scrutiny and is no longer employed by the federal government. The exact circumstances of his departure were not immediately clear.

A small market with a very sharp information edge

Prediction markets let traders buy and sell contracts based on future events, from election outcomes to economic decisions and the contents of public remarks. Supporters say the prices can aggregate information. But the Perez case illustrates a basic vulnerability: a person with direct access to an answer can have an enormous advantage over traders who are merely forecasting it.

That distinction matters because these were not casual office bets. The CFTC treats the contracts at issue as swaps regulated under federal commodities law, and its order says government information obtained through employment cannot be converted into private trading gains.

The action also lands as event-contract markets expand into increasingly specific questions. A contract on whether a particular word will appear in a speech may look narrow, but it can become highly valuable when one trader has already seen the script.

What the order does—and does not establish

The enforcement action is focused on Perez’s access, trades and duty to protect nonpublic information. It does not accuse Trump of involvement, and it does not allege that the speeches were altered to influence the contracts.

Nor does the order prohibit mention markets generally. Instead, it draws a line around how government employees may use confidential material: public words can be traded as an uncertain future event, but advance knowledge of those words cannot lawfully become a private shortcut.

For Perez, the result is unusually concrete. The regulator says he must return every dollar and two cents of the profits, add $65,000, and stay out of the market for three years—all because he traded on words before the public could hear them.