Breaking: People close to Trump allegedly made $90,000 by secretly reading his speech notes—are the prediction platform’s insider trades finally about to come to light?

First, let me tell you something.

The Trump teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez, has been with him for ten years. He started serving the machine back in 2016. Before every presidential speech, he was the last person to touch the script—he could even obtain versions that Trump himself changed on the spot.

This guy didn’t waste the privilege. CFTC investigators found that within three months, he placed bets on specific words, phrases, or topics appearing in more than 12 of Trump’s public speeches.

State of the Union, the Davos forum speech, prime-time remarks, the Medal of Honor ceremony—at every event, he could find out in advance what words Trump would use. He bet in Kalshi’s “mentions” markets whether particular words, phrases, or topics would be spoken.

Even if Trump skipped a portion of the script, he would pull his bets mid-speech.

Over this operation, he accumulated profits of more than $90k. But this year in March, Kalshi’s monitoring system detected something wrong—the trading patterns were nothing like normal buying and selling. Market makers also marked him through举报 channels.

The platform froze the account directly, withheld almost all the profits, and then referred the case to the CFTC.

Kalshi’s enforcement chief Robert Denault issued a statement via CNBC, saying the monitoring team quickly flagged those trades, and the platform is assisting regulators and providing evidence.

Perez is now negotiating a settlement with the CFTC. The likely outcome is that he will have all profits returned and be banned from making similar trades again. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Manhattan knows about the case, but decided not to pursue a criminal investigation.

At a press conference, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Perez has been suspended without pay, is no longer responsible for the teleprompter, and will not continue working at the White House. Per CNBC, Trump himself was aware and personally signed off, calling it “very unfortunate, an outright shame.”

Leavitt emphasized that the White House has extremely strict ethical guidelines. This past March, it issued an internal memo specifically warning staff not to use nonpublic information to trade in prediction markets.

Perez is not the first to crash.

In May 2025, Kyle Lanford, a California gubernatorial candidate, placed about $200 in a market related to his own campaign. The profits were minimal, yet he was fined $2,246 and banned from the platform for five years.

From August to September 2025, an episode editor named Arjom Kaptur used his position to learn the show lineup in advance, getting an abnormal win rate on Kalshi and profiting about $5,400. He was then required to repay the profits, plus an additional $15,000 penalty, and was banned for two years.

In February 2026, former Congressman George Santos publicly promised he would attend Trump’s State of the Union, while betting that he would not attend. He profited tens of thousands of dollars. His account was frozen and referred to regulators and law enforcement.

In April 2026, three congressional candidates were investigated for making small bets in markets related to their own elections; each was fined from several hundred to several thousand dollars and banned for five years.

Even small profits—or if profits weren’t withdrawn—if someone used insider information, they still couldn’t escape platform penalties and regulatory enforcement.

Another prediction platform, Polymarket, didn’t get away either.

U.S. military Special Forces Sergeant Can Ken Van Dieck, during operations between December 2025 and January 2026 to help capture Venezuelan former president Nicolás Maduro, used confidential information to buy large contracts on Polymarket and profited more than $400k. He was arrested this April and faces criminal and civil insider trading charges.

In May 2026, software engineer Michelle Spano of Google was indicted, accused of trading on Polymarket using company internal “annual search trends” data, with profits of about $1.2 million.

Insider trading can keep happening on prediction markets for a very simple reason: an information advantage can quickly turn into money. And the size of capital in some topic markets is no longer something to ignore—such as the Kalshi topic market “Which companies will Trump mention in July,” where trading volume exceeded $150k.

High liquidity gives insider holders plenty of room to profit, while ordinary users only lose in an information asymmetry situation. It also damages market price fairness and platform credibility.

Platforms and regulators are trying multiple approaches. Kalshi recently updated its policies, requiring traders in specific markets to disclose professional information. It strengthens prevention upfront through KYC procedures, around-the-clock abnormal-transaction detection, and reporting channels. In the first quarter of this year, the platform carried out more than 150 investigations, froze more than 100 suspicious trades, and referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement agencies.

On the regulatory side, in recent enforcement actions, the CFTC has repeatedly cited rules banning the misuse of nonpublic information and market manipulation, and is working with the Department of Justice to push criminal accountability. People who trade using information from within the government or corporate data may face felony charges such as fraud and money laundering, along with years in prison.

The White House also clarified via internal memo that government employees may not participate in such bets.

So you ask me: what direct impact does this have on $BTC and $ETH ? On the short-term data front, it doesn’t affect supply and demand—it’s more of a regulatory sentiment signal. But in the long run, every such smoking-gun case is pushing prediction markets toward a stricter compliance framework.

If platforms are forced to tighten up, liquidity may temporarily shrink, but the market’s resilience comes precisely from rebuilding trust after these “mouse accounts” are pulled out.

My inclination is to label this event as neutral-to-bearish—around -0.2. It’s not a nuke, but it’s enough to make those insiders with itchy hands weigh their options again.

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