Did White House insiders cash in on ₹5.22 crore US-Iran ceasefire bets? Teleprompter aide's ₹87 lakh wager raises alarm
Betting on ongoing geopolitical events has caught global attention since United States attack Iran earlier this year. However, this time, the White House is alarmed
Betting on ongoing geopolitical events has caught global attention since United States attack Iran earlier this year. However, this time, the White House is alarmed as anonymous betters have won a whopping ₹5.22 crore ($600,000) betting on the US-Iran ceasefire deal. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the White House, federal agencies, and congressional investigators are concerned amid mounting evidence that prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi are being used to cash in on non-public government information. White House lawyers probe anonymous ceasefire bets Concern first stirred earlier in 2026 after anonymous accounts on Polymarket placed five-figure wagers, in rupee terms running into several lakh, that President Trump and Iran would strike an initial ceasefire before the end of April. Senior officials reportedly worried that whoever placed the bets may have drawn on insider knowledge to guarantee an easy win. Also Read | Spain vs Argentina final fuels ₹11,000 crore prediction market on Kalshi White House Counsel's Office staff reportedly canvassed aides across the building, attempting to identify who among hundreds of employees might be behind the wagers. The effort ultimately stalled. Polymarket permits users to register anonymously, making it nearly impossible for lawyers to trace individual bettors, even though the proceeds themselves could be tracked on the blockchain, according to WSJ report. Rather than naming names, the Trump administration issued a general caution. A memo circulated in late March instructed staff that using non-public information for personal financial gain was strictly prohibited. The warning came too late to stop the payout. Three anonymous Polymarket accounts collected more than ₹5.22 crore ($600,000) after correctly predicting the April ceasefire announcement, according to blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps. Trump's teleprompter's wagers spark CFTC investigation The episode that has drawn the most scrutiny involves Trump's own teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez.
The White House this week confirmed that Perez is under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over wagers exceeding ₹87 lakh ($100,000), allegedly placed using early access to presidential speeches. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration had no knowledge of the bets and pointed to existing ethics rules that bar employees from such conduct. She added that Trump was furious at the suggestion that anyone inside his administration might be trading on privileged information. Perez, who has worked as a technical aide to Donald Trump since 2016, has since been placed on unpaid leave. US V-P pick bets trace back to 2024 campaign The pattern of suspicious wagering is not new. Two previously unreported bets placed during the 2024 presidential campaign were reportedly built on advance tips that Trump would select JD Vance as his running mate, according to people familiar with those incidents. One such account came from Mark Moran, a former investment banker who says he learned of the Vance pick over dinner at a Georgetown cocktail bar, courtesy of Jake Denton, then a research associate at the Heritage Foundation. Acting on the tip, Moran placed a modest ₹78,300 ($900) wager on the Polymarket app roughly a month before the choice became official. "I'm doing Vance," Moran wrote to Denton in a message he later shared, before urging friends to follow suit. "I got a kid in the Heritage Foundation who has been leaking this to me," he told an associate, “so went all in on Vance.” The trade earned him roughly ₹52,200 ($600) in cryptocurrency, records show. Moran later mounted his own long-shot independent bid for the US Senate against incumbent Mark Warner of Virginia.
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