Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Golem (@web3_golem)
Recently, the White House was embroiled in yet another insider trading scandal.
A White House staff member traded using insider information to profit tens of thousands of dollars in prediction markets. The insider's identity turned out to be a long-term operator responsible for Trump's teleprompter during speeches. This employee has now been suspended and had his salary stopped.
This teleprompter operator has become the third insider disclosed by U.S. judicial authorities, following a special forces soldier involved in the Maduro capture operation and a Google security engineer, to have profited substantially in prediction markets using insider information. (Related Reading: After 4 Months, Polymarket Helped Trump Catch the Leaker of a Military Operation, but the Cost Was...; Checking the Answers Before Handing in the Test? Google Engineer Entangled in Polymarket Insider Trading Case)
Reported by Kalshi, Funds Frozen, But Ultimately Avoids Criminal Liability
The protagonist is named Gabriel Perez, who has been operating the teleprompter for Trump's speeches since 2016. Perez's journey to this job is rather dramatic. In 2016, Trump's campaign team urgently needed a teleprompter operator, so they searched for "teleprompter" on Google and found Perez's company. Perez was thus hired by Trump's team.
Gabriel Perez
Although Perez was hired by chance, over these 10 years, he gradually became one of Trump's closest aides. American Politico even stated that "Perez has become the only person Trump trusts," as he often receives Trump's personal last-minute modifications to public speeches.
Therefore, Perez became one of the few people with access to Trump's complete speech drafts in advance and held near-final approval authority over almost all of Trump's prepared remarks. This power is not insignificant. Perez's official title at the White House is Deputy Assistant to the President and Technical Advisor, with an annual salary of $175,000, only $20,000 less than senior staff like Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Such compensation already places him in the high-income bracket in the U.S., but the greedy Perez was not satisfied.
When prediction markets became popular, with countless players betting on which specific words Trump would "mention" in certain speeches, Perez discovered that his "privilege" could bring him even more wealth.
CFTC investigators found that Perez placed bets on over a dozen of Trump's speeches within about three months, with total profits exceeding $100,000. This included Trump's prime-time speech in December of last year, his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January of this year, the State of the Union address in February, and Trump's remarks at the Medal of Honor ceremony in March.
The U.S. President's statutory annual salary is $400,000, and with various allowances, the President receives approximately $569,000 per year. If Perez hadn't been caught, at his rate of earning over $100,000 in three months, his annual income, though his power is less than the President's, would have exceeded the President's salary.
However, even knowing the speech content in advance, Perez could not always successfully predict which words Trump would mention in his speeches because Trump often goes off-script "impromptu." When Trump skipped a word Perez had bet on during a speech, Perez would immediately sell to cut his losses. Trump himself admitted during a speech at the Detroit Economic Club in January that he doesn't look at the teleprompter 80% of the time.
Similar to the fates of the special forces soldier and the Google security engineer, Perez's exposure also originated from the prediction market platform's proactive reporting. Perez frequently used Kalshi for insider trading. Starting in March of this year, Kalshi's monitoring system detected some abnormal trades related to specific words mentioned in Trump's speeches, thus drawing attention to Perez.
After concluding its internal investigation, Kalshi quickly froze over $90,000 in Perez's account and handed the case over to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Upon learning of this, Trump commented that it was "disgraceful" and personally decided to suspend Perez without pay during the suspension.
Ultimately, Perez's greed led him to lose both his profits and his original job. However, compared to the special forces soldier and the Google security engineer, Perez was fortunate because U.S. judicial authorities did not file criminal charges against him; Perez won't face jail time.
During the investigation, the CFTC had notified federal prosecutors in Manhattan, but the prosecutors declined to open a criminal investigation. According to informed sources, CFTC regulators have expressed willingness to reach a settlement with Perez and have discussed terms with him. The result requires Perez to return his profits and cease similar trades thereafter.
Perez is Just the Beginning of Purging Insiders from "Mention" Markets
The reason Perez avoided jail is that prosecutors believe his actions do not constitute a criminal offense; he neither leaked important government information in advance nor caused harm to national security. As Trump said, "it's just disgraceful," damaging the clean image of government officials.
In March of this year, the White House warned staff not to use non-public information to place bets in prediction markets. White House spokesperson Davis Ingles stated: "The White House has strict ethics guidelines, and we expect all staff and officials to adhere to them."
But Perez is definitely not the only White House staff member profiting from insider information, and Trump, who openly runs a paid subscription group, is even less qualified to comment on this teleprompter operator (Related Reading: $100,000 a Month, Trump Starts Selling 'Alpha' ).
It's no wonder Perez couldn't resist the temptation; the "mention" markets in prediction platforms are indeed the category most susceptible to manipulation. When the cost for insiders to participate is pushed extremely low, while the potential returns are extremely high, it ceases to be merely a moral issue and becomes a mechanism design problem. In the face of profit, even outwardly respectable and ostensibly righteous politicians cannot guarantee they will never cross that line.
The gameplay of "mention" markets involves users betting on specific words, phrases, or topics that will be mentioned in public speeches. Compared to other events (such as political elections, sports events, etc.), the cost of cheating in "mention" markets is extremely low. It's not limited to people like Perez who know the speech content in advance; for the speaker themselves, cheating is as simple as uttering a word, literalizing "a word is worth a thousand pieces of gold."
At the Grammy Awards ceremony in February this year, host Trevor Noah, after saying "welcome back to the Grammys," suddenly shouted the word "Potato." As everyone was confused, Trevor Noah continued, "if you bet on Polymarket that I was going to say this word, you just made a killing," and congratulated user "Noah 22." However, in reality, the "What will be mentioned at the Grammy Awards" prediction on Polymarket didn't even have "potato" as an option, and the user "noah-22" was purely fictional.
Grammy host shouting potato at the awards ceremony
Some analyses later suggested this was a marketing activity by Polymarket, but it already demonstrated the speaker's ability to manipulate the "mention" market.
There's an even more direct example. In October 2025, during Coinbase's Q3 earnings call, just as the meeting was about to end, CEO Brian Armstrong said he noticed many people were betting in prediction markets on what he would mention during this call. He then opened Polymarket and read aloud all the words listed in the options, ultimately causing all outcomes in that market to reach 100% probability, ending in a draw.
The above are just two examples showcasing speakers' control over "mention" markets; there are certainly many more individuals truly profiting from this lurking beneath the surface. However, as regulation of prediction markets gradually intensifies, perhaps all insiders in "mention" markets will eventually be purged. Perez is just the beginning.
Last month, Kalshi updated its policy, requiring users to disclose their employers. Kalshi's head of enforcement, Bobby DeNault, explained the rationale: "If you have access to information because of your job or employment, and you have a legal duty related to that information, you have an obligation not to take that information for your own use and not to convert it for personal use." Polymarket has not yet imposed such strict disclosure requirements on users, but in the increasingly competitive and compliant prediction market landscape, it is believed that stricter compliance requirements from Polymarket are also on the horizon.
From the special forces soldier and Google engineer to the White House teleprompter operator, prediction markets are step by step purging insider trading. Simultaneously, the market is undergoing a demystification of prediction markets. What was once thought to reflect the wisdom of the crowd is, in reality, just a cash machine for a few insiders.
Although purging insider trading makes prediction markets more compliant, it also moves them further away from truth and closer to being pure casinos.
