The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has fined Gabriel Perez, former teleprompter operator for President Donald Trump, $65,000 for insider trading on Kalshi. Perez placed wagers on which words and topics Trump would mention in speeches, using advance access to prepared texts. He must forfeit roughly $100,000 in profits and faces a three-year trading ban.
Perez traded on 14 markets tied to Trump mentions and profited on 39 of 43 contracts, earning $107,539 in total. The regulator noted that Perez admitted guilt and cooperated with the investigation, which accelerated the process. Kalshi identified the insider activity through internal monitoring and reported the data to the CFTC. The White House dismissed Perez shortly after the matter became public last month. Trump called Perez's conduct 'a disgrace'.
Former CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero criticized the penalty as too small to deter insider trading at the highest levels of government. Unlike other cases — against Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo, who earned $1.2 million on Polymarket, and soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who traded on events involving the president of Venezuela — the CFTC did not file criminal charges against Perez.
A month earlier the CFTC fined former congressman George Santos $17,500 for price manipulation of a contract tied to his attendance at the State of the Union. Santos also received a three-year trading ban. After the scandal he began publicly attacking Kalshi, demanding it be classed as a gambling platform, and received a lifetime ban. This is the first permanent user block in Kalshi's history.
