The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuela raid initially seemed like an isolated incident. However, a new report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective suggests it may be just the tip of the iceberg.
The nonprofit research group analyzed over 435,000 Polymarket contracts from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, totaling $54.4 billion in cumulative volume, and discovered that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes have success rates that cannot be explained by skill or luck alone. Typically, such "longshot" bets succeed around 14% of the time across political markets, but in military-linked contracts, success rates have reached as high as 50% in some cases.
The authors of the report note that markets related to government policies, such as military and defense, are more challenging to predict using public information alone, making them more vulnerable to information asymmetries, including 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 has market surveillance teams in place and cooperates with the Department of Justice, particularly in the Venezuela case, where trading on confidential knowledge is prohibited, as it is on Kalshi.
The report's findings contribute to a growing body of research pointing in the same direction. A working paper from London Business School and Yale found that roughly 3% of traders account for most price discovery on Polymarket, while separate analysis from blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs showed that profits are even more concentrated, with fewer than 1% of wallets capturing about half of all gains. The ACDC 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.
The strike took place at 18:40 ET on June 21, and in the hours leading up to it, 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed across the contracts that ultimately resolved YES. Eight wallets shared about $1.8 million in profits, with one taking nearly $500,000. Despite the Pentagon's efforts to keep the operation covert, using decoy bombers and long-range stealth aircraft to avoid detection, a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome.
This pattern extends beyond a single event, as the report found that in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, winning longshot bets outnumbered losing ones, contrary to what market prices imply. While longshot bets can outperform due to 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 that others do not have. The ACDC's recommendations include implementing 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. The report concludes by calling for an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all.