Teleprompter operator must return $107,539 after CFTC order

Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator, traded prediction-market contracts using advance copies of presidential speech text between December 2025 and February 2026 and earned $107,539.02. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission treated the contracts as swaps and concluded Perez used nonpublic access to prepared remarks to gain an edge in the market.

The CFTC issued a settled administrative order requiring Perez to disgorge $107,539.02, pay a $65,000 civil penalty, cease and desist from further violations and accept a three-year ban on trading covered contracts. The agency said the penalty was substantially reduced because Perez provided exemplary cooperation and noted the settlement is a civil matter, not a criminal conviction.

According to the order, Perez repeatedly bought and sold “mention market” contracts that paid out if the President used specific words or phrases in prepared remarks. Other traders priced the likelihood that a phrase would be spoken, while Perez had prior access to the prepared text, the regulator said. The CFTC said Perez breached a duty of trust and confidence and converted that information into trading profits.

The exchange where the trades took place flagged the activity and referred it to regulators. The exchange’s enforcement head stated the surveillance team “promptly flagged, investigated and referred” the trades. The CFTC credited the exchange for assistance and did not bring charges against it, but did not specify the timing of the exchange’s review or referral in its public materials.

A February CFTC advisory requires designated contract markets to maintain audit trails, conduct surveillance and enforce rules against prohibited trading practices. The agency retains authority to investigate and pursue civil enforcement and coordinates with exchanges on referrals.

In June, after the trading period, the exchange announced new controls including risk scoring for sensitive markets, employment verification for some participants and expanded whistleblower tools. The public record does not establish whether those measures would have prevented the trades in question.