Sources: The Ministry of Justice arrests a soldier who bet $400,000 on the removal of Maduro
Federal authorities on Thursday arrested a Special Forces soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for allegedly receiving more than $400,000 by betting on his removal from office, sources familiar with the arrest told ABC News.
Federal investigators believe the commandos bet more than $33,000 on the BulliMarket prediction market just hours before President Donald Trump announced Maduro’s arrest in January, the sources said.
The series of bets — which netted more than $409,000 — immediately prompted scrutiny in the world of prediction markets and led to a months-long investigation into whether inside information was used to place bets.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News. It was not immediately clear whether the soldier had legal representation.
Sources told ABC News that the soldier was directly involved in the high-risk military operation that led to the arrest of Maduro and his wife.
Hours before President Trump announced that Maduro had been captured during “Operation Absolute Resolve,” the Special Forces soldier placed a series of bets on Polmarket, including whether Maduro would be removed from office by January 31 and whether the United States would invade Venezuela.
“We are a respectable country again, perhaps, like never before,” Trump said after the carefully planned overnight operation. “These highly trained warriors, working in cooperation with U.S. law enforcement, caught them very prepared.”
Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, are seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan heliport, escorted by heavily armed federal agents as they make their way into an armored car on their way to a federal courthouse in Manhattan, on January 5, 2026, in New York.
Xny/star Max/GC Images via Getty Images, file
According to Polymarket, a trader who created an account in December 2025 bet $33,933 across four predictions related to the US invasion of Venezuela and the capture of Maduro. The largest position – a $32,537 bet that Maduro would leave office by January 31 – resulted in a 1,242% profit of $404,222.
Arrest and accusation is It is believed to be the first time the Department of Justice has prosecuted an insider trading case in the prediction market. Polymarket, the world’s largest forecasting platform, allows traders to anonymously bet on future events using event contracts based on yes or no questions. Company representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
While prediction markets are primarily regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, suspiciously timed trades on platforms like Calci and PolyMarket have raised concerns about insider trading. In addition to Maduro’s $400,000 bet, another Polymarket user won nearly $550,000 through a series of bets related to the US striking Iran and removing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In an interview in early March, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, confirmed that prosecutors in his office were actively looking for ways to prosecute individuals who seek to game the system by manipulating prediction markets.
“Prosecutors are busy looking at laws we can use that are similar to insider trading laws,” Clayton told CNBC.
While prediction markets are relatively new, prosecutors may be able to apply a decades-old law to bring an insider trading case, according to Noah Solowiejczyk, a partner at the law firm Fenwick. & West and a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
“The Commodity Exchange Act handles a situation like this,” said Solovejczyk, who as plaintiff charged the first-ever cryptocurrency insider trading case. “There is a certain provision…that actually prohibits employees or agents of the federal government from trading on classified government information that they learn.”
However, Solowiejczyk noted that prosecutors may need to plan for a potential juror’s “learning curve” to understand how prediction markets work.
“The government’s main task will be to distill and simplify what happened so that the jury can understand it,” he said. “This is often one of the challenges the government faces in these cases involving new technology that jurors may not be familiar with.”
Although Thursday’s arrest represents the first of its kind for US authorities, the prosecution is not unprecedented globally. In February, an IDF reservist and a civilian were charged in Israel in connection with using confidential information to bet against Polymarket.
