A White House teleprompter operator has been placed on unpaid leave following reports that he used a prediction betting platform to profit from the content of President Donald Trump’s speeches.

Gabriel Perez, who has worked for Trump since his first presidential campaign, is being investigated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over allegations that he used inside knowledge of Trump’s speeches to make more than $100,000 through bets on Kalshi, according to a person familiar with the matter. ABC News was first to report the allegations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a briefing with reporters on Thursday, confirmed that Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave by order of the president following the ABC report.

“Obviously, I’m aware of the report; the president is, too. I talked to him about it,” Leavitt told reporters. “He believes it is deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace. And the individual who was cited in that report is in compliance with the CFTC, but has been placed on paid administrative leave. So there will be a teleprompter operator tonight, of course, but unfortunately it won’t be the one in that story.”

Perez, who earns $175,000 a year as a White House staffer, has long been a trusted member of Trump’s production team. The president has publicly praised Perez’s work in the past, thanking him during campaign events and crediting him with helping speeches go smoothly.

Robert DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, told Business Insider in a statement that the platform’s oversight team flagged and referred the trades to the CFTC after an internal investigation.

Starting in March, Kalshi’s surveillance system identified unusual transactions in its “mention markets” tied to specific words in Trump’s speeches, leading him to Perez, according to a person familiar with the matter. Following the internal investigation, Kalshi froze funds totaling more than $90,000 in his accounts before Perez could withdraw most of his earnings on the platform, the person said.

“We have charged this individual and have been assisting regulators in this matter and providing evidence that we collected, as we do in any referral,” DeNault said.

When contacted by Business Insider for comment, White House representatives pointed to Leavitt’s public comments to reporters about the incident and declined to comment further. A CFTC spokesperson declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation into Perez.

The case is among the highest-profile allegations involving alleged insider trading in prediction markets, which have skyrocketed in popularity over the past year by allowing users to bet on everything from elections to economic data to the content of presidential speeches.

Kalshi and other prediction market platforms, such as Polymarket, prohibit users from trading on material non-public information. Platforms have increasingly expanded their internal oversight systems as regulators and lawmakers examine how marketplaces police potential abuses.

Business Insider previously reported that Kalshi referred former Rep. George Santos to the Department of Justice and the CFTC after detecting suspicious transactions related to his attendance at Trump’s State of the Union address. Santos has denied any wrongdoing.

Business Insider also reported on another case in which a US soldier was accused of using classified military information to place bets on Polymarket, winning more than $400,000.