The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuela raid initially seemed like an isolated incident. However, a recent report suggests it may be just the tip of the iceberg.

The Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit research group, analyzed over 435,000 Polymarket contracts from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, totaling $54.4 billion in cumulative volume. The findings indicate that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes achieve success rates that are difficult to attribute to 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 tied to specific government policies, including military and defense as well as foreign affairs, are particularly challenging to forecast using publicly available information.

This makes them more vulnerable to information asymmetries, including insider trading or specialized knowledge. In these markets, the gap between informed and uninformed traders may be the widest, creating an environment where a small group can consistently outperform others, not just by reacting faster, but by possessing more knowledge. Polymarket emphasizes its market surveillance teams and collaboration with the Department of Justice, particularly in the Venezuela case.

Trading on confidential knowledge is strictly prohibited on the platform, 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 the London Business School and Yale discovered that approximately 3% of traders are responsible for most price discovery on Polymarket.

Separate analysis by blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs showed that profits are even more concentrated, with less than 1% of wallets capturing around half of all gains. The ACDC report's contribution lies in suggesting a possible source of this edge.

The report examines the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran as a case study.

Polymarket had listed several date-specific contracts on whether a strike would occur. Markets related to June 19 and June 20 expired without incident, with no longshot bets winning. The strike occurred at 18:40 ET on June 21.

In the hours leading up to it, 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed across contracts that ultimately resolved to YES. Eight wallets shared about $1.8 million in profits, with one wallet taking nearly $500,000. The Pentagon had designed the operation to be unreadable from the outside, utilizing decoy bombers and long-range stealth aircraft to avoid detection.

Despite this, a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome. This pattern extends beyond a single event. Across Polymarket's military and defense category, 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 for other 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 that others do not have. As a nonprofit research group funded through the Fund for Constitutional Government, ACDC has no surveillance product to sell, unlike Solidus Labs, whose recent Polymarket analysis doubles as a marketing case for the platform it licenses to Kalshi.

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.'