Arabic version: إلزام مشغّل سابق في البيت الأبيض بدفع 172 ألف دولار
According to BBC News, former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez has been ordered to pay more than $172,000 after using prior knowledge of President Donald Trump’s speeches to place bets on a prediction-markets platform.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Perez made trades on Kalshi between December 2025 and February 2026 concerning what Trump would say during addresses. The regulator said he must surrender $107,539.02 in profits and pay a civil penalty of $65,000. Perez has also been barred from trading for three years.
In announcing the settlement on Friday, the CFTC said Perez had “misappropriated” advance knowledge of the speeches to make bets, breaching his duty of trust and confidence. It said the civil penalty was reduced because of his “exemplary co-operation” with the investigation.
Kalshi said its analysts had identified unusual betting in “mention markets” in March. Such contracts allow users to predict whether a speaker will use terms including country names, campaign slogans or other words. The company said account data indicated that the trader was a federal employee operating White House teleprompters, and that it reported the activity to the regulator.
The White House has not commented. In July, then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Perez was on unpaid leave and would not return to his post. That month, the White House Management Office told aides not to place bets on prediction markets, administration officials told CBS News, the BBC’s US media partner.
