A former White House teleprompter operator has been ordered to surrender more than $107,000 in profits and pay an additional $65,000 penalty after federal regulators found that he used advance access to President Donald Trump’s speeches to place profitable prediction-market trades.
Gabriel Perez, a longtime technical aide who operated Trump’s teleprompter, reached a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that was announced Friday. The agreement also prohibits Perez from trading for three years.
The CFTC announced the punishment Friday, saying Perez had improperly used “material, nonpublic information” obtained through his federal employment for his own financial benefit.
Perez generated $107,539.02 in profits by trading presidential “mention market” contracts between December 2025 and February 2026, according to the commission.
Those contracts allow traders to speculate on whether certain words or phrases will appear during presidential speeches.
Perez had a significant advantage because his White House position gave him access to Trump’s prepared remarks before the president delivered them publicly.
“In his position, Perez had access to presidential speeches prior to those speeches being delivered and Perez misappropriated that information — in breach of his duty of trust and confidence,” the CFTC said.
Perez used the information to trade contracts on Kalshi, an online prediction market that allows users to take financial positions on the outcomes of real-world events.
Kalshi itself detected suspicious activity and helped federal investigators with the case, according to the CFTC.
The regulator ordered Perez to disgorge the entire $107,539.02 he made through the trades.
He must additionally pay a $65,000 civil monetary penalty, bringing his total financial hit to more than $172,000.
The civil penalty was substantially reduced because of what the CFTC described as Perez’s “exemplary cooperation” during its investigation.
Perez must also cease further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations and is barred from trading for three years.
The former White House employee had already faced consequences inside the administration before Friday’s settlement.
Perez was placed on unpaid leave in July after allegations concerning his prediction-market activity became public. He is no longer employed by the federal government, although officials have not publicly clarified whether he resigned or was fired, per the Daily Mail.
Perez had worked as a key technical assistant handling Trump’s teleprompter scripts dating back to the president’s first campaign in 2016.
His access reportedly allowed him to review prepared presidential remarks before Trump took the stage.
Investigators examined trading connected to more than a dozen presidential events, according to the Daily Mail, including a December primetime address and Trump’s January appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The White House publicly addressed the controversy in July after the allegations first emerged.
Then-White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump viewed the situation as “deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace.”
Leavitt initially said Perez had been placed on paid administrative leave before immediately correcting herself and emphasizing that the leave was unpaid.
“To be very clear, that was a decision by the President,” Leavitt said at the time, later adding that “this individual will no longer be here.”
Asked whether investigators believed other administration employees had engaged in similar activity, Leavitt said she had not been informed of any additional cases.
The White House also rejected suggestions that Perez’s conduct exposed a wider failure in its ethics procedures.
“There are very strict ethical guidelines here in the White House that explicitly state not to do this,” Leavitt said, adding that the White House Counsel’s Office explains those requirements to employees.
Leavitt instead described Perez as an individual who ignored existing rules and would face consequences for doing so.
Federal regulators ultimately reached a similar conclusion.
The CFTC found that Perez breached his duty of trust by taking information he obtained through his government position and using it to generate more than $107,000 in personal profits.
The settlement now forces him to surrender those profits, pay another $65,000 to the government and remain out of the trading markets for the next three years.
