Teleprompter Operator on Leave After $100K Kalshi Trades

Gabriel Perez, a longtime teleprompter operator, was placed on unpaid administrative leave on July 16 after allegations that he used advance access to presidential remarks to win more than $100,000 trading on the exchange Kalshi.

People familiar with the inquiry say the alleged trading spanned more than a dozen speeches over roughly three months. The trading account was reportedly frozen for about $90,000 and later banned from the platform. Perez is reportedly discussing a potential settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; the CFTC declined to comment.

Kalshi reported that its surveillance team detected unusual activity, carried out an investigation and provided evidence to the CFTC. The exchange has not published timestamps showing when the account was first flagged, when trading was restricted, or when the referral to the regulator occurred.

Because there is no public timeline of those events, it is not clear whether Kalshi’s restrictions came before any subsequent alleged trades. The sequence of flagging, freezing and referral has not been disclosed.

A February CFTC advisory noted that misappropriating confidential information in breach of a duty can violate Section 6(c)(1) of the Commodity Exchange Act and Regulation 180.1. The advisory also says designated contract markets must maintain audit trails, monitor trading and enforce their rules.

Kalshi’s rulebook bars members who possess material nonpublic information or who can influence an outcome from trading related contracts. On June 9 the platform announced enhanced integrity measures, including market risk scores and employment screening for access to certain higher-risk markets. Those safeguards were implemented after the December-to-March period when the alleged trades are said to have taken place. Kalshi has not disclosed whether the new controls were applied to presidential-mention markets after the rollout or whether comparable checks existed before then.

A separate commercial data feed for presidential social posts is scheduled to begin delivering published content to institutional customers in milliseconds; that product focuses on faster access to already published material, while the Perez allegations concern access to remarks before they were delivered.

The White House placed Perez on leave while the matter is reviewed.