Perez surrenders $107,000, accepts three-year Kalshi ban in CFTC settlement

Kalshi flagged the bets and retained $90,000 before CFTC referral

Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator, settled insider-trading charges with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and prediction market Kalshi on Friday over more than $100,000 in wagers placed on contracts tied to President Trump’s speeches using early access to the remarks.

Under the terms of the settlement, Perez will pay a $65,000 civil monetary penalty and give up more than $107,000 in winnings to the CFTC. He will also be barred from direct or indirect access to Kalshi for three years.

The CFTC, in a statement Friday, said Perez had used his White House position to trade on information unavailable to other market participants. “In his position, Perez had access to presidential speeches prior to those speeches being delivered and Perez misappropriated that information,” the agency said.

Kalshi, one of the federally regulated prediction markets where traders can wager on political, sports, corporate, and economic outcomes, began flagging Perez’s bets earlier in the year and interviewed him as part of an internal investigation. The platform froze his account and retained more than $90,000 of his profits, then referred the matter to the CFTC.

The White House had warned staff against using their roles to bet on prediction markets, including in a March memo from the White House Management Office. Then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House was unaware of Perez’s bets and that the president was “furious over the idea of individuals in his administration trading on inside information.” Perez was placed on unpaid administrative leave.

The Perez settlement is one of a widening series of federal enforcement actions targeting alleged insider trading on prediction markets. Earlier this year, federal prosecutors charged a soldier who participated in the U.S. operation to capture former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro with using classified information to place winning wagers on Polymarket that Maduro would be removed from office. Prosecutors said the winnings exceeded $400,000; the soldier has pleaded not guilty.

Federal authorities have also been preparing charges against a U.S. service member suspected of placing Polymarket bets related to military strikes in Iran and Venezuela that earned him more than $1 million, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Separately, the government is pursuing a case involving an employee at the global accounting and consulting firm KPMG who is under investigation for betting on whether a specific public company would beat the consensus estimate for quarterly earnings. A KPMG spokesperson declined to comment. Charges in both cases could come this fall, though a final decision on bringing charges has not been made, according to people familiar with the investigations.

Prediction markets offer a way for users to bet on political races, sports, corporate performance and crypto and commodity prices, and have drawn federal enforcement attention.