The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuela raid initially appeared to be an isolated incident. However, a new report suggests it may be just the tip of the iceberg. The Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit research organization, analyzed over 435,000 Polymarket contracts from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, totaling $54.4 billion in cumulative volume. The results show that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes have success rates that cannot be easily explained by skill or luck.
Typically, such 'longshot' bets succeed around 14% of the time across political markets, but in military-linked contracts, success rates have exceeded 50% in some cases. The authors of the report note that markets related to government policies, including military and defense, are more challenging to predict using only public information, making them more vulnerable to information asymmetries, such as insider trading or specialized knowledge.
This creates an environment where a small group of traders can consistently outperform others, not just by reacting faster, but by having access to more information. Polymarket emphasizes its market surveillance teams and cooperation with the Department of Justice on the Venezuela case, highlighting that trading on confidential knowledge is prohibited on the platform. The report's findings contribute to a growing body of research pointing in the same direction.
A working paper from the London Business School and Yale found that approximately 3% of traders account for most price discovery on Polymarket. Separate analysis by blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs revealed that profits are even more concentrated, with less than 1% of wallets capturing around half of all gains. The report examines the June 2025 U.S.
strikes on Iran as a case study, where Polymarket listed several date-specific contracts on whether a strike would occur. In the hours leading up to the strike, 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed across the contracts that ultimately resolved YES, with eight wallets sharing about $1.8 million in profits. The Pentagon had designed the operation to be unreadable from the outside, yet a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome.
The pattern extends beyond this single event, with winning longshot bets outnumbering losing ones in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, contrary to what market prices imply. While longshot bets can outperform due to various reasons, including mispricing or shifts in public expectations, the consistency of the patterns, especially in markets tied to military decisions, suggests that some participants may be operating with information advantages.
The report recommends identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups, and limits on how granular contracts can become. Ultimately, the report concludes by calling for 'an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all.'