In January 2026, after the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a claim (archived) circulated online that Barron Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, made $400,000 from insider trading bets related to Maduro's capture before it happened.
Insider trading generally means the practice of buying or selling a publicly listed company's stock based on material, nonpublic information that could affect an investor's decision to buy or sell those stocks. Most insider trading of publicly listed company stock is illegal.
One X user who shared the claim wrote, "Barron Trump earned himself a nice $400,000 after insider trading Maduro's capture just hours before it happened."
(X user @CarOnPolymarket)
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking if the claim was true.
The claim appeared to be based on reports that an anonymous bettor on the prediction market Polymarket made more than $400,000 on various bets related to Venezuela and Maduro that they placed in the days and hours before U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan president on Jan. 3, 2026.
Some social media users speculated that the person who placed the bets must have had insider knowledge of the U.S. mission to capture Maduro, with suggestions including Barron Trump or his father (archived).
The identity of the anonymous bettor remained unclear at the time of this writing. In April 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice said it charged Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Army soldier, with using confidential government information to make more than $400,000 by trading various outcomes related to Venezuela. Van Dyke had allegedly made many of the same trades social media users claimed in January that Barron or Donald Trump made.
Given that Van Dyke had not entered a plea and his case was ongoing at the time of this writing, we leave this claim unrated.
Snopes reached out to the White House and Polymarket for comment on the anonymous bettor and await replies to our queries.
The bets
According to an archived version of the account that reportedly placed the Venezuela bets, the bettor created a Polymarket account in December 2025 and bought shares starting on Dec. 27 — the same date range, bets and amounts that the DOJ claimed Van Dyke entered.
Between Dec. 27, 2025, and Jan. 2, 2026, the bettor spent $32,538.34 betting that Maduro would be "out" by Jan. 31, 2026. The bettor bought shares at prices ranging from 7 to 10 cents each. On Polymarket, shares representing the correct outcome of a bet after the market resolves are worth $1.
Polymarket wrote, "President Nicolás Maduro will be considered to be removed from power if he resigns, is detained, or otherwise loses his position or is prevented from fulfilling his duties as President of Venezuela within this market's timeframe."
By that definition, the market for "Maduro out by January 31, 2026?" would have resolved to "Yes" following his capture on Jan. 3, 2026, meaning the shares the anonymous bettor bought would be worth $1 each. Given the prices the bettor bought those shares for, the person could have made up to 93 cents per share.
The bettor also bet that U.S. forces would be in Venezuela by Jan. 31, 2026, that the U.S. would invade Venezuela by Jan. 31, 2026, and that Trump would invoke the War Powers Act against Venezuela by Jan. 31, 2026.
According to the archived profile, the anonymous bettor had made a profit of $409,882 from their bets as of Jan. 4, 2026. The DOJ alleged that Van Dyke made "approximately $409,881" on his bets.
The other bettors
As social media users and financial market experts speculated whether the anonymous bettor used insider knowledge of the U.S. mission in Venezuela, reports circulated on cryptocurrency exchange platforms that other accounts had also made a profit using what appeared to be a similar method.
One article shared on the Binance platform reported that two other Polymarket bettors who also opened their accounts in December 2025 had made profits of $75,000 and $145,000, respectively, buying the same shares as the anonymous bettor. The article called the bettors "insider wallets."
KuCoin, another cryptocurrency exchange platform, also reported on the two bettors and the anonymous bettor, calling them "Pentagon Employees," though it was unclear how the report's author evidenced that claim.
In addition to the three bettors who profited from Maduro's capture, the KuCoin report pointed to a fourth bettor who it said "lost a significant amount of money because they knew the news too early."
That bettor started betting that Maduro would be "out in 2025" on Dec. 22, 2025, and continued on to buy $39,241 worth of those shares until Dec. 30, 2025. Those shares would have all been worthless after Dec. 31, 2025, when Maduro was still in power in Venezuela.
According to military officials and Trump himself, the mission to capture Maduro faced weather delays and could have gone ahead before the end of 2025, though only select people would have known this before Jan. 3. It was unclear whether the bettor who placed the "Maduro out in 2025" bet held this knowledge.
Insider trading on prediction markets
In its release about Van Dyke, Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York called Van Dyke's alleged actions "clear insider trading." Prosecutors alleged Van Dyke had unlawfully used confidential government information for personal gain and stolen nonpublic government information to make his bets.
However, even if the purported Van Dyke account or any of the other accounts in question did purchase shares on the basis of nonpublic information, that was not necessarily a punishable act within prediction markets such as Polymarket. Regulation of these markets is still developing and does not always follow the rules for publicly listed stock markets, where insider trading is more easily defined and almost always illegal.
Prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the U.S. That commission announced in February 2025 that it was developing a new regulatory framework for predictions markets, saying that it wished to do away with "anti-innovation policies" that it said had previously restricted "common-sense regulation of prediction markets."
Polymarket's CEO Shayne Coplan has previously praised the trading site, saying that it "creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market and the market to change," suggesting he views the potential for people to use nonpublic information to shape the market as a positive thing that should be widely allowed.
According to the DOJ, lawyers could pursue avenues other than "insider trading" when prosecuting Van Dyke. The departments announcement of the indictment noted that Van Dyke had reportedly violated nondisclosure agreements in which he promised to "never divulge, publish, or reveal by writing, words, conduct" classified information relating to military operations.
In sum …
Snopes could not independently verify whether any of the Polymarket bettors that profited from well-timed bets relating to Maduro's capture belonged to Barron or Donald Trump. The DOJ alleged an account that made more than $400,000 belonged to a U.S. Army soldier who it claimed had unlawfully used information about military operations to profit. That case was ongoing at the time of this writing.
According to reports, experts disagreed over whether the timing of the bets alone proved that the bettor had nonpublic knowledge used it to place profitable bets.
Prediction markets — where users bet on outcomes of anything from elections to sports games — are regulated in the U.S. but companies have differing approaches to traders using "insider" knowledge to place their bets.
Polymarket, the platform where one user made a $400,000 profit on Venezuela bets, was reportedly relaunching operations in the U.S. at the time of this writing but did not allow users in the U.S. access to its main betting platform. Reuters reported that some users circumvented this restriction using virtual private networks.