The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on August 28 ordered Gabriel Perez, a former White House teleprompter operator, to pay $172,539.02 after finding that he used nonpublic information from President Donald Trump’s speeches to trade Kalshi event contracts. The settlement, announced in CFTC Release No. 9289-26, also imposes a three-year trading ban.
What did the CFTC say Gabriel Perez did?
The CFTC said Perez misappropriated material, nonpublic information obtained through his federal government employment to trade contracts tied to words and phrases Trump might use in public remarks. The agency said the trading occurred between December 2025 and February 2026 and generated $107,539.02 in profits.
Perez worked as a White House teleprompter operator, a role that gave him access to presidential speeches before they were delivered. According to the CFTC, he used that access to trade presidential mention market contracts, a category of event contract based on whether specified words or phrases would appear in the president’s speeches.
The order treated the contracts as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. The agency said Perez breached a duty of trust and confidence by using speech text obtained through his job for personal trading, bringing the matter under CFTC fraud and manipulation authority rather than securities law.
The action is narrow in its charged findings. The CFTC tied the disgorgement amount to Perez’s trading between December 2025 and February 2026, while he had advance access to presidential remarks. The agency did not frame the case as a general challenge to mention markets. It framed it as an insider-trading case involving job-derived information.
How is the $172,539.02 payment structured?
The CFTC ordered Perez to disgorge $107,539.02 in trading profits and pay a $65,000 civil monetary penalty. The agency said the penalty reflected a discount under its cooperation policy because of Perez’s “exemplary cooperation” with the investigation.
The order also requires Perez to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations. For three years, he is barred from trading on, or subject to the rules of, any CFTC-registered entity. That covers designated contract markets and other registered venues overseen by the commission.
KalshiEX assisted the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement, according to the agency’s release. That detail matters because Kalshi is the registered exchange at the center of the trades, not merely a venue mentioned in passing. The CFTC’s public acknowledgment gives exchanges a regulatory incentive to detect suspicious trading, freeze activity where their rules allow it, and refer potential misconduct to federal enforcement staff.
Perez is no longer employed by the White House. The Associated Press reported after the settlement that he had been placed on unpaid leave and was no longer in the role.
Why does this matter for prediction market enforcement?
The Perez settlement shows the CFTC applying commodities-law insider-trading principles to a retail event-contract trader who allegedly used workplace access to nonpublic information. For prediction markets, the line is practical: traders can act on public information and analysis, but not on confidential information obtained through a position of trust.
The CFTC had already put the sector on notice. In February, the Division of Enforcement issued a prediction markets advisory describing prohibited conduct in event contracts, including insider trading, wash sales, prearranged trading and manipulation. The advisory cited prior exchange-level Kalshi disciplinary matters involving a political candidate who traded contracts tied to his own candidacy and a YouTube channel editor who traded using advance knowledge of unreleased content.
Those examples were not CFTC orders against the traders. They were exchange disciplinary matters used by the agency to explain the kind of conduct that can implicate federal commodities law. Perez’s case goes further because the CFTC itself issued a settled order with disgorgement, a civil penalty and a trading ban.
The enforcement theory is especially important for contracts where a small group of people may know the answer before the public. Speech markets make that risk obvious. A person with access to prepared remarks can know, or have a strong basis to know, whether a word or phrase is likely to appear before other market participants see the event unfold.
How does the Perez case compare with other 2026 actions?
The Perez order sits alongside a broader CFTC push around event-contract integrity, but its procedural posture is specific. It is a settled administrative action against an individual trader, with a quantified disgorgement amount and a three-year ban.
In April, the CFTC filed CFTC v. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, No. 1:26-cv-03369, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The agency alleged that Van Dyke, an active-duty U.S. Army service member, used classified nonpublic information about a U.S. operation involving Nicolás Maduro to trade Polymarket contracts and generate more than $404,000 in profits. The Justice Department also announced a parallel criminal case in the same district.
On July 31, the CFTC ordered former Rep. George Santos to pay $35,069.98 over trading in a Kalshi contract tied to attendance at the 2026 State of the Union. The agency said Santos traded on whether he would attend the address and made material misrepresentations and omissions on social media while holding positions in the market. That order included $17,569.98 in disgorgement, a $17,500 civil penalty and a three-year trading ban.
The common thread is not that every case looks the same. Van Dyke is pending federal litigation with a parallel criminal case. Santos and Perez are settled CFTC orders. The common regulatory concern is that event contracts can be distorted when traders have direct control over the underlying event, privileged access to the answer, or confidential information obtained through government or employment duties.
How has Kalshi changed its controls?
Kalshi has added compliance checks aimed at higher-risk markets. In June, CoinDesk reported that Kalshi introduced employer-disclosure requirements for certain markets it viewed as more exposed to insider trading or abuse. Decrypt reported the same month that the rule applies to markets flagged for elevated risk, including areas such as corporate performance, national security and major geopolitical events.
That policy is distinct from a general prohibition on trading with misappropriated information. The CFTC’s February advisory and Perez order focus on misuse of confidential information in breach of a duty. The employer-disclosure requirement is a surveillance and screening tool that can help an exchange identify users whose jobs may create conflicts on sensitive contracts.
Kalshi also announced in February that it had formed an independent surveillance advisory committee and expanded its surveillance partnerships. Those measures came before the Perez order and reflected the exchange’s attempt to present market integrity as a core regulated-exchange function, not a customer-service issue.
What is the regulatory stake now?
The immediate stake is whether prediction exchanges can police contracts where nonpublic information may be concentrated among a small set of insiders. Speech markets are one example, but the same issue can arise in contracts tied to government announcements, corporate communications, campaign decisions, media releases and other scheduled events.
The broader rulemaking track remains unsettled. On February 4, the CFTC withdrew its 2024 event-contract proposal. On March 12, it issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking seeking public comment on prediction markets and event contracts, with comments due 45 days after Federal Register publication.
Until a final rule emerges, enforcement orders are doing much of the work. The Perez order gives exchanges, traders and compliance teams a dated example with exact dollar amounts: $107,539.02 in disgorgement, a $65,000 penalty and a three-year ban for trading event contracts with nonpublic information obtained through federal employment.
