White House aide turned secret speech text into $107k on prediction markets before CFTC stepped in

A White House speech insider who worked as a teleprompter operator must surrender $107,539.02 in prediction-market profits after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that he traded on advance access to presidential speeches.The settled administrative order also requires Gabriel Perez to pay a $65,000 civil monetary penalty, cease and desist from further violations and accept a three-year trading ban. The CFTC said the penalty was substantially reduced because of Perez’s exemplary cooperation. The cited materials describe a civil regulatory settlement and do not report a criminal conviction.How the White House speech insider gained a trading edgeThe CFTC found that Perez traded presidential “mention market” contracts between December 2025 and February 2026 while working as a White House teleprompter operator. The event contracts, which the regulator describes as swaps, settled on whether the President would use particular words or phrases during speeches.Perez saw the speeches before they were delivered, according to the order. The CFTC said he misappropriated that material nonpublic information in breach of a duty of trust and confidence, converting knowledge of the prepa...