A $400,000 profit on Maduro's capture raises insider trading questions on Polymarket

For one prediction market trader, the Trump administration’s weekend capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was a nearly half-million-dollar payday.

On Polymarket, a popular site for making bets on the outcome of real world events, a user wagered $32,000 that Maduro would be toppled by the end of January hours before Trump ordered the operation. When it was clear the U.S. had captured Maduro, the trader made more than $400,000 in profit.

Was the trader just lucky, or privy to classified government deliberations? For now, it’s impossible to tell.

Online sleuths have attempted to identify this trader with no luck. The account, which originally went by the handle “Burdensome-Mix” before changing its display name to a string of letters and numbers, joined Polymarket just weeks ahead of making the Maduro trade.