A White House teleprompter operator used his position to win around $100,000 by placing bets on the prediction market Kalshi about what President Trump would say in his speeches, the company said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
It was the latest accusation that someone had used inside information to make a profit on a prediction market like Kalshi and Polymarket, which have grown rapidly and transformed into cultural phenomena.<\/p>\n
In this case, Kalshi said Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to Mr. Trump, had placed wagers on common words that would appear in the president\u2019s speeches, such as country names and economic terms. In March, when Kalshi\u2019s surveillance systems flagged some of Mr. Perez\u2019s trades, the company froze the funds in his account and referred the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets.<\/p>\n
Mr. Perez is in discussions with federal regulators to settle allegations that he used his inside knowledge of the president\u2019s speeches to place the bets and has been cooperative, a person with knowledge of the talks said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have charged this individual and have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected, as we do in any referral,\u201d Robert DeNault, Kalshi\u2019s head of enforcement, said in an emailed statement, referring to the company\u2019s rules against insider trading.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said the agency could not \u201cconfirm or deny an investigation.\u201d Mr. Perez could not immediately be reached for comment. ABC News<\/a> earlier reported the incident.<\/p>\n Prediction markets allow people to wager on everything from state elections to World Cup matches to who will win on \u201cLove Island.\u201d The companies have attracted billions of dollars in trades, but their popularity has raised concerns about whether they violate state gambling laws and are being manipulated by those with insider information.<\/p>\n In April, three political candidates were found trying to bet on their own races<\/a>. In June, federal authorities said they were investigating whether former Representative George Santos<\/a> had made a bet about attending Mr. Trump\u2019s State of the Union address.<\/p>\n In March, the White House warned staff<\/a> against using insider information to place bets on prediction markets, just weeks before federal prosecutors charged an Army Special Forces soldier with using classified information to bet on the capture of Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, on Polymarket.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump is set to give a prime-time address on Thursday<\/a> about election security and voting machines. On Kalshi, users are betting<\/a> he will say \u201cSave America Act,\u201d \u201cfraud,\u201d and \u201cIran\u201d more than three times, among other phrases and topics.<\/p>\n In a press briefing on Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that she had talked to Mr. Trump about reports that his teleprompter operator had been making money off his speeches on prediction markets and that he had called it a \u201cdisgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis individual will no longer be here,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was a decision by the president.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Leavitt was also asked if other members of the White House staff were suspected of using inside information to make money on prediction markets. \u201cNot to my knowledge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She added, \u201cThere are very strict ethical requirements by all staffers and officials here at the White House\u201d against such conduct.<\/p>\n Shawn McCreesh contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A White House teleprompter operator used his position to win around $100,000 by placing bets on the prediction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[53671,1452,24213,81966,9,11,10,17757,109765,1069,1876],"class_list":["post-298621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-commodity-futures-trading-commission","tag-donald-j","tag-insider-trading","tag-kalshi-inc","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-prediction-markets","tag-speeches-and-statements","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}