The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has ordered Gabriel Perez, a former White House teleprompter operator, to pay more than $172,000 over allegations that he used advance access to President Donald Trump’s prepared speeches to trade event contracts on whether specific words would be spoken publicly.
The settlement requires Perez to pay $107,539.02 in repayment and a $65,000 civil monetary penalty, according to the CFTC. It also prohibits him from trading on any CFTC-registered entity for three years. Perez agreed to the order without admitting or denying the agency’s findings.
The case places the use of nonpublic government information squarely within the CFTC’s emerging enforcement approach to prediction markets. Rather than alleging that Perez manipulated a public speech or its outcome, the agency said he traded after reviewing remarks that gave him an informational advantage over other market participants.
Trades allegedly followed access to prepared remarks
Perez opened his trading account on Dec. 8, 2025, and made trades between December 2025 and March 2026, the CFTC said. His role gave him access to prepared presidential remarks roughly an hour before they were delivered, according to the order.
The trades were tied to “mention markets,” a type of event contract that allows participants to take positions on whether a defined word, phrase, or subject will appear in a speech or other public event. Such markets can settle quickly once a transcript or broadcast establishes whether the condition occurred.
The CFTC alleged that Perez examined speech drafts and then placed positions linked to terms expected to be used in forthcoming addresses. The order did not frame the conduct as a prediction based on public political analysis. Instead, it described trades made after access to information unavailable to the broader market.
A three-year prohibition from CFTC-registered trading venues adds a practical restriction beyond the financial payment. Registered event-contract platforms have become a more visible part of the U.S. derivatives landscape, with contracts covering elections, economic releases, policy decisions, and public appearances.
Cooperation reduced the civil penalty
The $65,000 penalty reflected an approximately 40% reduction, the CFTC said. The agency credited Perez for voluntarily participating in an interview and accepting responsibility for his conduct, describing his cooperation as “exemplary.”
That discount left the repayment portion as the larger component of the settlement. Repayment is intended to strip gains tied to the alleged misconduct, while the civil penalty serves as the punitive element of the order.
The CFTC also said KalshiEX assisted its investigation. Robert DeNault, the CFTC’s enforcement head, said in a public post that the platform’s surveillance unit detected the trading activity.
Platform surveillance has become increasingly relevant as event-contract markets move beyond election outcomes into narrower, rapidly settling questions. Mention markets can be particularly vulnerable to informational asymmetries because a participant with access to an unreleased speech draft may know the answer before other traders have an opportunity to evaluate public signals.
Second federal employee event-contract settlement
The Perez matter is the CFTC’s second event-contract enforcement action involving a federal employee and its second related settlement in four weeks, according to the agency.
On July 31, former Representative George Santos agreed to pay about $35,000 in a separate matter involving contracts tied to attendance at February’s State of the Union address. Like Perez, Santos received a three-year trading ban.
The allegations in the Santos case differed sharply from those against Perez. The CFTC said the Santos matter involved alleged manipulation through misrepresentations about his own attendance, while the Perez case centered on the alleged use of insider information obtained through employment.
Together, the cases show the agency applying different enforcement theories to the same growing market structure. One concerns an alleged attempt to influence or misrepresent a contract’s underlying event; the other concerns trading on confidential knowledge of that event. Both approaches resemble longstanding market-integrity concerns, adapted to contracts whose value depends on real-world outcomes rather than share prices.
Enforcement pressure extends beyond registered platforms
The CFTC’s latest action arrives amid scrutiny of trading based on confidential information across both U.S.-registered and offshore prediction markets.
In May, federal authorities charged Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo in a case alleging he used internal search data to generate roughly $1.2 million in gains on Polymarket. The CFTC filed a parallel civil complaint, according to the materials cited by the agency.
Also in May, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer requested documents from Kalshi and Polymarket concerning identity verification, geoblocking, and systems for detecting suspicious trading. The request focused in part on controls intended to identify potential insider trading and misuse of confidential information.
Those inquiries have put operational pressure on platforms to show that their markets can detect suspicious patterns without relying solely on after-the-fact regulatory action. The CFTC’s reference to KalshiEX’s surveillance team in the Perez case suggests that platform monitoring can trigger referrals when a trader’s timing and contract selections raise concerns.
Regulatory debate continues as court challenge fails
The enforcement action comes as the CFTC considers a proposed rules framework for prediction markets under Chair Michael Selig. The policy debate has focused on which event contracts should be permitted, how platforms should manage market integrity, and where federal commodities oversight overlaps with state gambling rules.
A recent court decision added another complication for operators seeking a uniform federal framework. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit ruled against Kalshi in its dispute with Nevada gaming regulators, finding that the company had not shown it was likely to prove that federal commodities law preempts Nevada’s gambling restrictions.
That ruling does not resolve the broader legal status of every event contract or platform. It does underscore that prediction-market operators face overlapping questions about federal derivatives law, state gaming regulation, customer controls, and surveillance obligations.
For government employees and contractors with early access to policy documents, speeches, or other market-moving information, the Perez order draws a clear enforcement boundary: using unreleased official material to trade contracts tied to its public release can bring repayment demands, financial penalties, and exclusion from regulated trading venues.
For more on rules, surveillance and payouts around event contracts, explore Toobit’s detailed guide on event contracts today.
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