Right before the U.S. surprise attack began in Venezuela, a user who placed a large sum on a betting site and walked away with about $410,000 (about 600 million KRW) in profit has drawn attention.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 5th (local time) that on the U.S. prediction market Polymarket, one user staked more than $20,000 (about 29 million KRW) on the wager ‘Maduro falls by January’.

He had been placing money on ‘Maduro falls’ little by little since December 27 last year, and put more than half of his total $34,000 (about 48 million KRW) stake in right before the operation to capture President Maduro.

The next day, after news broke of the dramatic arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the user collected a profit of more than ten times the amount he had wagered, about $410,000 (about 600 million KRW).

Until this trader increased the stake, the likelihood of the ouster of President Maduro had been considered low. At that time on Polymarket, the contract on ‘Maduro out by January 31’ traded at 8 cents per share. The WSJ explained that this indicated users were assessing the chance that Maduro would lose power within January at around 8%.

The mysterious user concentrated the final $20,000 stake between 8:38 p.m. and 9:58 p.m. on the 2nd. U.S. President Donald Trump issued the order to attack at 10:46 p.m. that night, meaning the stake was ramped up right beforehand.

As this deal, which nailed the timing and yielded a windfall, drew public attention, suspicions arose that someone might have used information about a top-secret U.S. military operation to turn a quick profit.

The Trump administration, aiming for surprise, is said to have shared the plan to strike Venezuela only among a very small circle of top senior aides. However, the preparation and execution of the operation involved a large-scale deployment of troops. During the operation, 150 U.S. military aircraft took off en masse from 20 locations, including aircraft carriers and land bases.

Tre Upshaw, founder of the startup Polysights, which provides analytical tools to Polymarket users, noted, “This is more likely to be insider trading,” and added, “Given the lack of related news, that is a very large amount of money to put in at that price.”

Noah Solowichik, a partner at the law firm Fenwick & West, explained that if the person who made a large profit by betting on Maduro were a U.S. public official who misused government information, they could be indicted under laws that ban insider trading related to derivatives contracts.

After news of this transaction spread, Representative Ritchie Torres (Democrat) said he would introduce a bill this week that explicitly prohibits elected officials, political appointees, and regular employees of the federal government who can access nonpublic information from betting on ‘prediction markets’.