President of the United States Donald J. Trump is seen at the Great American State Fair Kickoff Ceremony in Washington, DC, United States on June 24, 2026.
Kyle Mazza | Anadolu | getty images
President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is being investigated by federal regulators in connection with bets he allegedly placed on a prediction market platform. Kalashi Related to statements made by Trump.
The operator reportedly made more than $90,000 in profits on trades, but most of that money was confiscated after Kalshi placed bets on the platform. “mentionsAccording to the company, the market was marked as doubtful. That market includes contracts on the words or phrases Trump will say during a scheduled speech.
A person familiar with the investigation of trades by Commodity Futures Trading CommissionThe person who spoke on condition of anonymity identified the operator as Gabriel Perez, Who has handled the teleprompter for Trump’s speeches since the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Our monitoring team immediately flagged these trades following an exchange investigation and referred them to the CFTC,” Robert DeNault, head of enforcement at Kalshi, said in a statement to CNBC.
“We are assisting regulators on this matter and have provided the evidence we collected, as we do in any referral,” Denault said.
The CFTC declined to comment.
CNBC has requested comment from the White House.
According to Kalshi, the company’s monitoring in March flagged trading on contracts related to Trump’s public statements that did not follow typical patterns of buying and selling.
Some trades were marked separately by market makers in so-called whistleblower channels.
According to the company, Kalshi’s surveillance analysts used data collected during customer onboarding and monitoring processes to discover that the account holder worked for the federal government and a teleprompter operator.
After this Kalshi froze the account and kept almost all the profits with itself.
Perez’s investigation was first reported by? ABC News.
The media outlet, citing sources, reported that in addition to Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress in February, “CFTC investigators found that Perez placed bets on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period, including a December primetime address, a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Trump’s comments during the Medal of Honor ceremony in March.”
Perez’s LinkedIn page identifies him as an employee of VIP Prompting, a company that has reportedly operated White House teleprompters since the 1960s.
A person who answered the phone at the VIP prompting Thursday declined to comment.
Kalshi has banned insider trading on its platforms, and has taken steps until 2026 to crack down on speculators who use material, non-public information to trade on its markets.
The company recently instituted new requirements for traders in certain markets to submit details on their employment status. Those changes were announced in June, and Pérez’s business was reportedly put on hold in March.
The CFTC’s investigation of Perez comes on the backdrop of two major insider trading cases involving prediction market platforms.
In April, a US Army Special Forces master sergeant was arrested on federal criminal charges in a case where prosecutors alleged he made highly profitable trades on event contracts on the Polymarket platform related to the US military mission to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
Sergeant, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, was reportedly involved in the planning and execution of that successful raid. Van Dyke is being sued in a civil complaint by the CFTC for his alleged conduct.
In May, federal prosecutors charged Google The employee, Michele Spagnuolo, is charged with fraud in connection with Polymarket contracts, which were allegedly based on internal company data related to Google’s “Year in Search” lists.
– CNBC megan casella Contributed to this article
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes client acquisition and minority investment.