The White House staffer who once ran Donald Trump's teleprompter has agreed to hand over more than $172,000 after federal regulators accused him of secretly betting on the president's own words before they were spoken.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced Friday that Gabriel Perez, who worked as a teleprompter operator and technical adviser inside the White House, must forfeit $107,539.02 in trading profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty. Regulators say Perez used his advance access to draft presidential speeches to place wagers on Kalshi, a prediction-market platform where users bet real money on which specific words or phrases a public figure will say — so-called "mention markets."

According to the CFTC's order, Perez ran the scheme between December 2025 and February 2026, misappropriating "material, nonpublic information obtained through his federal government employment" and breaching a duty of trust and confidence he owed to the government.

Kalshi blew the whistle

It wasn't the government that caught him first. Kalshi's own compliance team flagged unusually well-timed trades tied to Perez's account, which at one point held more than $90,000, froze it, opened an internal investigation and referred the matter to federal regulators, CBS News reported. The company separately imposed its own three-year trading ban on him.

Perez received what the CFTC called a "substantial discount" on his penalty in exchange for cooperating with investigators, which regulators say is why the fine landed at $65,000 rather than higher.

News of the scheme first surfaced in July, when Perez was removed from his White House post. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed it at a briefing that month, saying the president believes the conduct is "deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace," according to NBC News.

"Deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace."

The episode has put a spotlight on the fast-growing world of political prediction markets, where platforms like Kalshi let members of the public trade real money on the outcome of speeches, elections and other newsworthy events. The White House has since moved to bar staff from placing wagers tied to nonpublic information they access on the job, CNN reported.

Perez faces no criminal charges under Friday's civil settlement. The CFTC order also requires him to cease future violations of federal commodities law and bars him from trading on Kalshi for three years. Regulators described the case as among the first of its kind involving mention-market contracts and signaled they intend to keep scrutinizing the sector as prediction-market betting on politics continues to grow.