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The operator allegedly made more than $90,000 in profits on the trades, but most of that money was frozen by Kalshi after the bets on the platform’s “Mentions” market were flagged as suspicious, according to the company.
A person familiar with the investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, identified the operator as Gabriel Perez, who has handled teleprompters for Trump speeches since the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation,” said Robert DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, in a statement to CNBC.
“We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected, as we do in any referral,” DeNault said.
CNBC has requested comment from the White House and the CFTC.
Some of the trades were separately flagged by market makers in so-called whistleblower channels.
Kalshi’s surveillance analysts used data collected during the onboarding of customers and monitoring procedures to discover that the account holder worked for the federal government and a teleprompter operator, according to the company.
Kalshi then froze the account, retaining almost all of the profits.
The investigation of Perez was first reported by ABC News.
Perez’s LinkedIn page identifies him as an employee of VIP Prompting, a company that reportedly has operated White House teleprompters since the 1960s.
A person who answered the phone at VIP Prompting on Thursday declined to comment.
— CNBC’s Megan Cassella contributed to this article
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.
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