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Insider Trading Suspicions: Who is secretly making millions in the White House?

2026-04-20 19:40:18Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
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Throughout US President Donald Trump's second term, traders have placed millions of dollars in bets just before he makes major announcements.

The BBC has examined trading volume data on several financial markets and compared it with some of the president's most important statements that have influenced market movements.

A consistent pattern of increases was found just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview became public.

Some analysts say this bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading where bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public.

Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at predicting the president's interventions.

Here are five of the most important examples.

March 9, 2026

Some of the biggest moves have been in oil trading in the futures market.

Nine days after the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, Trump told CBS News in a phone interview that the conflict was “almost over.” Oil traders reacted to the news that the conflict could end much sooner than expected by selling oil, with the price falling by about 25%.

However, market data shows that a large increase in bets was placed on the price of oil just 47 minutes before the news was released.

The traders who placed these bets will have made millions of dollars from the movement of oil prices.

March 23, 2026

On March 23, just two days after Trump threatened to “destroy” Iran’s nuclear power plants, he posted on TruthSocial that Washington had held “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE TALK” with Tehran on a “FULL AND TOTAL RESOLUTION” of hostilities.

It was a big surprise to diplomatic observers and traders. Immediately, stocks rose and the price of U.S. crude oil, which had been rising, fell sharply.

As the BBC reported at the time, 14 minutes before the president's tweet there was an unusually high number of bets on the price of oil in the US.

The same pattern was seen among traders buying contracts for Brent crude oil, the other major oil benchmark.

The trades looked "abnormal, for sure," an oil analyst told the BBC at the time.

April 9, 2025

Away from the war in the Middle East, there are other examples of commercial activity that have raised eyebrows.

On April 2 of last year, Trump announced what he called Liberation Day, a series of sweeping tariffs on goods from virtually every country in the world.

Stock markets across the globe fell sharply.

But a week later, when Trump announced a 90-day "pause" on tariffs for all countries except China, stock markets rose sharply.

The S&P 500 index rose 9.5%, one of its biggest daily gains since World War II.

Again, an unusual trading pattern preceded these events with an unusually high number of bets ahead of the announcement of a fund tracking the S&P 500.

The number of contracts traded rose to over 10,000 per minute shortly after 6 p.m. Earlier in the day, the number had been in the hundreds.

Some traders bet over $2 million on the stock market to rise that day, even though it had been losing money for seven straight days. The big rise could have generated a profit of almost $20 million for them.

Later that week, several senior Democrats in the US Senate wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) asking the financial regulator to investigate whether the president's announcements "enriched administration insiders and cronies at the expense of the American public."

When asked by the BBC whether it had looked into these allegations, an SEC spokesman declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the White House did not respond to a BBC request for comment on any of the unusual trading activities analyzed in this report.

January 3, 2026

December 2025: Burdensome-Mix account created

January 2, 2026: Account places $32,000 for Maduro's overthrow

January 3, 2026: Maduro is captured and Burdensome-Mix wins $436,000

The recent growth of online prediction markets has also caught the attention of observers.

Blockchain-powered platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi offer users the opportunity to speculate on everything from the weather to baseball to US foreign policy.

President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr, is an investor in Polymarket and is a member of its advisory board. He also acts as a strategic advisor to Kalshi and was contacted by the BBC for comment.

In December 2025, a user created an account on Polymarket called Burdensome-Mix. On December 30, she placed her first bet that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would not be in office until the end of January 2026.

Between December 30 and January 2, Burdensome-Mix placed a total of $32,500 in this position.

When Maduro was captured by US special forces and overthrown the next day, Burdensome-Mix made $436,000.

Shortly after, the account changed its username and has not placed any bets since.

February 28, 2026

February 2026: Six accounts created on Polymarket

February 28: Accounts earn $1.2 million combined

According to blockchain analysis website Bubblemaps, six accounts were created on Polymarket in February.

All placed bets on a US attack on Iran that would occur by February 28. When the attacks were confirmed by President Trump in the early hours of that day, the accounts collectively won $1.2 million.

Five of these six users have not placed any more bets since then, but one of the account's latest activities shows that it subsequently won $163,000 by correctly betting on a US-Iran ceasefire by April 7, which was announced by Washington and Tehran that day.

Polymarket told the BBC that it "establishes, maintains and enforces the highest standards of market integrity", adding that it works "proactively" with regulators and law enforcement to do so.

In March of this year, both Polymarket and Kalshi outlined new rules to crack down on domestic trade.

Forecast markets are under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The CFTC did not respond to a BBC request for comment, but its chairman recently told a Congressional committee that his organization had "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading.

It has also been revealed that the White House sent an internal email to staff last month, warning them not to use inside information to place bets on prediction markets.

Spokesman Davis Ingle told the BBC at the time that "any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Difficult to verify

Insider trading has been illegal for most Americans since the passage of the Securities Act in 1933. It was expanded to include U.S. government officials in 2012, although to date no one has been prosecuted under the law. Paul Oudin, a professor specializing in financial regulatory law at ESSEC Business School, says the rules are difficult to enforce.

“Financial authorities will not carry out a criminal prosecution if they cannot understand who the source of the information is,” says Oudin.

None of the US financial authorities contacted by the BBC admitted any of the insider trading allegations.

"You can have massive trades in a financial instrument that clearly show that someone was aware of what Donald Trump was about to declare," says Oudin.

"However, there is a strong chance that no one will be prosecuted," he concludes.


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