Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator accused of using his access to nonpublic information to profit from prediction market bets tied to President Trump's speeches, is no longer employed by the federal government, the Associated Press reported. A White House official confirmed Perez's departure but declined to say whether he resigned or was terminated, and noted he had already been placed on unpaid leave earlier this month.
According to an ABC News investigation cited in the AP report, Perez is alleged to have generated more than $100,000 in winnings by placing bets on Kalshi that were tied to the timing or content of Trump's public remarks, wagers that would only pay off reliably for someone with advance knowledge of what was coming.
How Kalshi Caught the Pattern
The case surfaced after Kalshi's own surveillance team flagged unusual trading patterns tied to the speech-related markets and referred the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator with oversight of prediction market platforms. Kalshi's terms explicitly prohibit users from trading on information obtained through their employment, a rule designed to guard against exactly this kind of insider-style advantage on an otherwise public betting market.
The episode highlights a structural tension prediction markets face as they move closer to the center of political and financial news: the same real-time, event-driven contracts that make the platforms popular also create incentives for anyone with early knowledge of an outcome, whether a government insider or a corporate employee, to trade on it before the public catches up.
A Wider Regulatory Backdrop
Perez's exit lands amid broader scrutiny of how prediction markets are regulated in the United States. In a separate but related dispute, a US judge recently and temporarily blocked Minnesota's attempt to ban prediction markets outright, underscoring how unsettled the legal status of these platforms remains at the state level even as federal regulators like the CFTC weigh in on individual trading-conduct cases.
Whether Perez faces further legal consequences beyond losing his government job remains unclear, and neither Kalshi nor the CFTC has publicly detailed what, if any, enforcement action might follow the referral.
