Trump’s teleprompter operator had one job that no bettor could match: he saw the president’s words before anyone else did. Federal regulators now believe he turned that access into more than $100,000 on the prediction market Kalshi — the first known case of Trump teleprompter operator insider trading, and a scandal that turned the president’s very next speech into a $10 million betting frenzy.
KEY FACTS AT A GLANCE
- Who: Gabriel Perez, Trump’s teleprompter operator since 2016 and a technical assistant to the president
- What: Alleged insider bets on Kalshi “mention markets” using advance access to Trump’s prepared remarks
- The haul: More than $100,000 in profits across at least a dozen speeches over roughly three months
- Frozen: Kalshi locked up about $90,000 of the winnings and banned the account
- Caught by: Kalshi’s surveillance team, which flagged the trades and referred them to the CFTC
- Status: Unpaid administrative leave, CFTC settlement talks, no criminal charges
The insider who saw every word first
Gabriel Perez has run Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, traveling with the president as a technical assistant and, by most accounts, serving as one of the last people to see a speech before it is delivered. That proximity is the whole story. On Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market, one of the fastest-growing product lines is the “mention market” — contracts that let traders bet on whether a public figure will say a specific word or phrase during an event. When you already know what is loaded on the glass, those markets stop being a guess.
Investigators believe Perez wagered on more than a dozen Trump speeches over about three months, including a December primetime address, the January World Economic Forum appearance in Davos, remarks at the Detroit Economic Club, the February State of the Union, and a March Medal of Honor ceremony. Tellingly, he is said to have backed out of trades on the occasions Trump went off-script — a pattern of near-perfect timing that is difficult to explain as luck. Trump has openly bragged that he improvises constantly, telling the Detroit Economic Club in January, according to CasinoBeats, that “I go off teleprompter about 80% of the time.” The bets, regulators suspect, tracked the 20% that stayed on it.
How Kalshi caught the teleprompter operator
Perez was not undone by a whistleblower or a leaked screenshot. He was undone by math. Kalshi’s surveillance systems flagged abnormal betting on the president’s mention markets — accounts that consistently beat the field on wording — and when the company looked at who was behind the winning trades, it found a federal employee. That is precisely the kind of account-holder data at the center of Kalshi’s push to make traders disclose their employers, and it is what let the exchange connect a winning account to the West Wing. Kalshi froze roughly $90,000 in profits, banned the account, and referred the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
“The Kalshi surveillance team promptly flagged, investigated and referred these trades to the CFTC.”
— Robert Denault, Head of Enforcement, Kalshi
The consequences, so far, are more corporate than criminal. Manhattan federal prosecutors declined to open a criminal case, and the CFTC has signaled a willingness to settle — an outcome that, according to ABC News, could require Perez to hand back his profits and refrain from similar trades rather than face charges. The White House suspended him without pay. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president considered the episode “a disgrace,” even as the administration continues to champion the CFTC’s authority over prediction markets. It is the first time suspected insider trading on a prediction market has been traced inside the White House itself — but it fits a detection pattern the industry has been warning about, part of a broader surge in suspicious-trading cases, and it leans on the same employer-disclosure data Kalshi now uses to unmask insiders.
The $10M twist: the scandal became the market
Here is the part the straight news reports missed. Exposure did not cool the market — it supercharged it. According to CasinoBeats, more than $10 million was traded on the mention market for Trump’s next “Speech to the Nation” after the scandal broke, dwarfing the roughly $900,000 that changed hands on the December address at the center of the probe. The same report puts total mention-market volume across 2026 at over $910 million. The lesson traders took from an insider-trading bust was not to stay away; it was that these markets move on information, and everyone wanted in on the most-watched speech of the year.
Not a one-off: 2026's prediction-market insider wave
The teleprompter case is startling because of where it happened, not because it is unusual. Insider trading on prediction markets has become the defining integrity problem of the 2026 boom, and Perez now joins a growing roster. Kalshi previously fined a MrBeast video editor $20,000 for betting on view-count markets he could influence. A Google engineer was charged over a $1.2 million Polymarket "Year in Search" scheme. Four wallets pocketed $663,000 front-running Trump's Iran-ceasefire announcement. And only weeks earlier, the resignation of George Santos over Kalshi insider trading torched a Polymarket deal.
Industry analyst Dustin Gouker has argued for months that mention markets are, in his words, "ripe for manipulation and insider trading" — precisely because the people closest to a speech, a product launch, or a search-trends report are the people best positioned to trade on it. The teleprompter operator is simply the cleanest illustration yet: a low-profile staffer with high-value information, turning the mechanics of a live broadcast into a betting edge.
FAQs
Gabriel Perez is Trump's teleprompter operator, a technical assistant who has traveled and worked with the president since 2016. He is often one of the last people to see a speech before it is delivered, which gave him advance access to the president's prepared remarks.
Mention markets are contracts on the prediction market Kalshi where traders bet on whether a public figure will say a specific word or phrase during a speech or event. Because the outcome depends on scripted language, anyone with advance access to prepared remarks holds a significant information advantage.
Perez allegedly made more than $100,000 across at least a dozen Trump speeches over roughly three months. Kalshi froze about $90,000 of those profits and banned the account.
Kalshi's surveillance team flagged abnormal betting patterns on Trump's mention markets, then traced the winning account to a federal employee. The exchange referred its findings to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator that oversees prediction markets.
Manhattan federal prosecutors declined to open a criminal case. Instead, the CFTC has signaled a willingness to settle, an outcome that could require Perez to return his profits and refrain from similar trades rather than face criminal prosecution.
Perez was placed on unpaid administrative leave and banned from Kalshi. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president considered the situation a disgrace.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- An insider edge, not a lucky streak — advance access to Trump's scripts let his teleprompter operator allegedly win on Kalshi mention markets, making $100K+ before the profits were frozen.
- Surveillance, not a leak, broke the case — Kalshi's monitoring flagged the abnormal trades and traced them to a federal employee, then handed the CFTC its evidence.
- Civil, not criminal — prosecutors passed on charges; the likely resolution is a CFTC settlement returning the winnings, plus unpaid leave.
- The scandal made the market bigger — Trump's next speech drew a reported $10M+ in mention-market volume, a roughly 11x jump over the flagged December address.
- Part of a pattern — the case joins a 2026 wave of prediction-market insider scandals, from a MrBeast editor to a Google engineer to the Iran-ceasefire wallets.
Sources
- Officials probe whether White House teleprompter operator profited off Trump's words — NPR
- White House teleprompter operator made more than $100K betting on Trump's speeches — ABC News
- Trump suspends teleprompter operator over Kalshi bets allegations, White House says — CNBC
- White House employee under investigation for making bets on Trump speeches — CNN
- Over $10M Traded on Trump Speech After Teleprompter Scandal — CasinoBeats
