Prediction markets are facing renewed insider-trading scrutiny after a U.S. White House staffer, long involved with President Donald Trump’s teleprompter, was reportedly in talks with federal regulators over allegations that he profited from bets tied to the president’s speeches. ABC News reported Thursday that the matter centers on whether Gabriel Perez—who has served as a technical assistant operating the teleprompter since 2016—used nonpublic information to place wagers on Kalshi markets linked to specific remarks.
According to ABC News, Perez allegedly bet on more than a dozen Kalshi “Mentions” contracts—products that let users wager whether certain words, phrases, or topics will appear in public speeches—earning over $100,000 in profits. The report adds that Kalshi’s surveillance flagged the activity and referred it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Key takeaways
- ABC News says teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez placed Kalshi “Mentions” bets tied to Trump speeches and earned more than $100,000.
- Kalshi reportedly detected the trades through its monitoring systems and referred them to the CFTC.
- Federal scrutiny of prediction markets appears to be intensifying as lawmakers and regulators focus on potential access to nonpublic information.
- Recent high-profile Polymarket-related allegations and wallet-pattern investigations have already heightened compliance concerns across the sector.
How the Kalshi “Mentions” markets came under scrutiny
Kalshi’s “Mentions” markets are designed around verifiable speech outcomes: users wager on whether particular words, phrases, or topics will appear when a public figure delivers a prepared message. ABC News reports that Perez allegedly used this structure to place bets on language expected to be included in Trump’s remarks.
The ABC report further claims that investigators found evidence suggesting Perez sometimes exited positions mid-speech when Trump reportedly skipped prepared passages that contained words he had wagered would be mentioned. If accurate, the timing detail points to a key question at the center of insider-trading concerns: whether the trades were based solely on public expectation and market pricing, or on knowledge obtained before the speech content became public.
ABC News said regulators uncovered bets connected to more than a dozen speeches over roughly a three-month span, including Trump’s State of the Union address and remarks made at the World Economic Forum.
Regulatory escalation and the CFTC referral
ABC News attributes the discovery process to Kalshi’s surveillance systems. The exchange’s monitoring reportedly detected the betting pattern and prompted a referral to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That referral matters because it indicates the activity was treated not just as a compliance question for a private platform, but as a potential issue for federal oversight.
The report also says the White House placed Perez on unpaid administrative leave following publication of the allegations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that Trump called the alleged conduct a “disgrace.”
While the ABC News account describes negotiations with federal regulators to settle the matter, it does not provide details about the specific allegations’ legal theory, possible violations, or whether an agreement has been reached. Readers should watch for official regulatory filings or enforcement action that clarifies what conduct regulators believe occurred and what standard they applied.
Why this is a broader warning for prediction markets
The Kalshi teleprompter story arrives at a time when prediction markets have seen both rapid growth and increasing concern about market integrity. In recent months, multiple incidents have raised questions about whether traders may sometimes benefit from information that is not available to the general public.
In March, Cointelegraph previously reported on concerns surrounding Polymarket traders who earned roughly $1 million after correctly betting the United States would strike Iran before the end of February. That episode drew attention after Bloomberg, citing analytics firm Bubblemaps, reported that some wallets placed bets only hours before explosions were first reported in Tehran.
Cointelegraph also reported separate allegations involving traders making more than $1.2 million by betting on an onchain investigation into DeFi platform Axiom shortly before investigator ZachXBT published accusations related to insider activity. Another example highlighted by Cointelegraph involved a trader who reportedly made about $400,000 by wagering on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shortly before that news became public.
Across these cases, the common thread is not simply that traders were right—it’s that the timing of certain trades appeared unusual relative to public knowledge. Investigators and lawmakers are increasingly focused on whether that timing could reflect nonpublic access rather than genuine forecasting skill.
Lawmakers push for tighter rules around political outcome trading
Beyond platform-level surveillance, U.S. lawmakers have also signaled they want clearer guardrails for prediction markets tied to political or public-policy outcomes. Last month, Republican Representative Bryan Steil, who chairs the House subcommittee on digital assets, introduced legislation aimed at restricting members of Congress and their immediate families from trading prediction market contracts connected to public policy and political events, according to Cointelegraph’s earlier coverage.
That kind of proposal aligns with the concern surfaced by the teleprompter operator case: prediction markets can involve content that effectively becomes “public” only when a speech is delivered, an official announcement is made, or an event is confirmed. If insiders—whether due to their job duties or privileged access— can anticipate specific wording or developments, markets built on public outcomes can drift toward information asymmetry.
Even when the underlying platform uses monitoring tools, enforcement depends on whether regulators believe the trades reflect actionable misconduct under existing market rules or analogous legal frameworks. The direction of travel in U.S. policy suggests more scrutiny is likely, particularly for markets that depend on politically sensitive disclosures.
What to watch next
For investors, traders, and builders, the key unknown is how regulators frame and prove the alleged information advantage in the Kalshi case. Watch for official regulatory statements or filings from the CFTC that clarify the scope of the conduct, the standard being applied to speech-linked contracts, and whether this becomes a template for future enforcement against other prediction market participants.
