Original ｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author｜Golem (@web3_golem)
Recently, the White House was exposed in another insider trading scandal.
A White House staffer made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the prediction market through insider information, and the insider's true identity was only a long-time operator of Trump's teleprompter. The employee has now been suspended without pay.
This teleprompter operator became the third insider disclosed by the U.S. Department of Justice to have made large profits in the prediction market using insider information, following the special forces soldier involved in the Maduro capture operation and the Google security engineer. (Related reading: 'Four months later, Polymarket helped Trump catch the military operation leaker, but at a cost...' 'Checking answers before submitting? Google engineer caught in Polymarket insider trading case')
Reported by Kalshi, funds frozen, but ultimately no criminal liability
The protagonist is named Gabriel Perez, who has been operating the teleprompter for Trump's speeches since 2016. Perez's path to this job was quite dramatic. In 2016, Trump's campaign team urgently needed a teleprompter operator, so they searched Google for "teleprompter" and found Perez's company. That's how Perez was hired by the Trump team.
Gabriel Perez
Although Perez was hired by chance, over the past 10 years he gradually became one of Trump's closest aides. Politico even called Perez "the only person Trump trusts," and he often received last-minute revisions to public speeches from Trump himself.
Thus, Perez became one of the few people who could get the full text of Trump's speeches in advance and had the final say on almost all of Trump's prepared remarks. This power was not insignificant. Perez's official title at the White House was 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 Caroline Leavitt.
Such a salary already places him in the high-income bracket in the U.S., but the greedy Perez was not satisfied.
When prediction markets became popular, countless players began betting on whether Trump would mention specific words in a given speech. Perez realized that his "privilege" could bring him even more wealth.
CFTC investigators found that Perez placed bets on more than a dozen of Trump's speeches over about three months, making a total profit of over $100,000. These included Trump's prime-time speech in December last year, his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January this year, the State of the Union address in February, and Trump's speech at the Medal of Honor ceremony in March.
The U.S. President's statutory annual salary is $400,000, plus allowances, totaling about $569,000 per year. If Perez hadn't been caught, at his rate of earning $100,000 in three months, his annual income would exceed the president's salary, even though his power was less.
But even knowing the speech content in advance, Perez could not always successfully predict which words Trump would mention, because Trump often deviated from the script to "improvise." When Trump skipped a word Perez had bet on, he would immediately sell to cut 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.
Like the special forces soldier and the Google security engineer, Perez's exposure also came from a proactive report by the prediction market platform. Perez frequently used Kalshi for insider trading. Starting in March this year, Kalshi's monitoring system detected some abnormal trades related to specific words mentioned in Trump's speeches, and thus noticed Perez.
After an internal investigation, Kalshi quickly froze over $90,000 in Perez's account and handed it over to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). When Trump learned of this, he commented that it was "disgraceful" and personally decided to suspend Perez without pay during the suspension period.
Perez, driven by greed, ended up losing both his profits and his job. However, compared to the special forces soldier and the Google security engineer, Perez was lucky because the U.S. judicial authorities did not file criminal charges against him, so he won't go to prison.
During the investigation, the CFTC notified federal prosecutors in Manhattan, but the prosecutors declined to open a criminal investigation. According to sources, CFTC regulators have indicated a willingness to reach a settlement with Perez and have discussed terms with him, requiring him to return the profits and cease similar trading in the future.
Perez is just the beginning of cleaning up insiders in the "mention" market
The reason Perez didn't go to prison is that prosecutors believed his actions did not constitute a criminal offense, as he neither leaked important government information nor endangered national security. As Trump said, "It's just disgraceful," damaging the integrity of government officials.
In March this year, the White House warned staff not to use non-public information to bet in prediction markets. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, "The White House has strict ethical standards, and we expect all staff and officials to abide by them."
But Perez is definitely not the only White House staffer profiting from insider information. Trump, who openly runs a paid group, is in no position to comment on this teleprompter operator (Related reading: $100,000 a month, Trump starts selling 'Alpha').
No wonder Perez couldn't resist the temptation. The "mention" market in prediction markets is indeed the easiest category to manipulate. When the cost for insiders to participate is extremely low and the potential returns are extremely high, it's no longer a moral issue but a mechanism design problem. In the face of profit, even outwardly respectable and righteous politicians cannot guarantee they will never cross that line.
The "mention" market allows users to bet on specific words, phrases, or topics that will be mentioned in public speeches. Compared to other events (like political elections, sports events, etc.), the cost of cheating in the "mention" market is extremely low. Not only can people like Perez who know the speech content in advance cheat, but for the speaker themselves, cheating is as simple as saying a word, making "a single word worth a thousand gold" a reality.
At the Grammy Awards in February this year, host Trevor Noah, after saying "Welcome back to the Grammys," suddenly shouted "Potato." While everyone was confused, Trevor Noah continued, "If you bet on me saying that word on Polymarket, you'd be rich," and congratulated user "Noah 22." But in reality, the Polymarket prediction "What will be mentioned at the Grammys" did not include "potato" as an option, and the user "noah-22" was purely fictional.
Grammy host shouts potato at the awards ceremony
Some post-hoc analyses believe this was a marketing campaign by Polymarket, but it already demonstrated the parties' ability to manipulate the "mention" market.
There is an even more direct example. In October 2025, Coinbase held its Q3 earnings call. Near the end of the meeting, CEO Brian Armstrong said he noticed many people were betting on what he would mention during the call, so he opened Polymarket and read out all the options word for word, ultimately causing all outcomes in that market to have a 100% win rate, ending in a tie.
The above are just two examples showing the parties' control over the "mention" market. Of course, there must be many others who truly profit from this lurking underwater. However, as prediction market regulation gradually deepens, insiders in the "mention" market may eventually be completely purged, and Perez is just the beginning.
Last month, Kalshi updated its policy, requiring users to disclose their employers. Bobby DeNault, Kalshi's head of enforcement, explained the reason: "If you have certain information due to your work or employment relationship, and you have relevant legal obligations, you are obligated not to appropriate that information for yourself or use it for private purposes." Polymarket has not yet imposed such strict disclosure requirements on users, but in the increasingly competitive and compliance-focused prediction market track, it is believed that stricter compliance requirements from Polymarket are coming soon.
From special forces soldiers, Google engineers, to White House teleprompter operators, prediction markets are gradually purging insider trading. At the same time, the market is undergoing a disenchantment with prediction markets. What was once thought to reflect collective wisdom is actually just an ATM for a few insiders.
Although purging insider trading makes prediction markets more compliant, it also moves them further from the truth and closer to pure casinos.
