Two wallets generated $117,153.35 in displayed trading volume across two cartel-arrest contracts while losing $171.71 combined in MSR’s original blockchain reconstruction. One lost roughly $33,751 and the other gained roughly $33,579. Their nearly offsetting results explain why the combined cost was small; they do not show that either wallet faced little individual risk. Original transaction reconstruction
The pair traded matching Yes and No shares. A complete pair covers both answers and has $1 of backing, so creating it and later returning it can add volume while leaving combined cash nearly unchanged. Money can also move from one member’s result to the other as the prices of the two outcomes change. Volume counts that activity; the final combined result measures what remained after the recorded flows.
The two cash results almost canceled
Original direct-chain reconstruction · 10 shared transactions · USD
−$33,750.93 + $33,579.22 = −$171.71
Ten shared transactions supplied most of the original activity
The same wallets appeared on opposite sides of ten shared transactions in the Ricardo Ruiz Velasco and Juan Carlos Valencia González arrest markets. MSR checked all 28 executions against Polygon’s ledger. After removing the pair’s activity, only $410.95 and $704.62 of other trading remained in the two contracts. The original broader review covered 1,849 fills across eight markets and checked 668 transactions. Coverage and reconstruction
The $171.71 combined loss was about 0.147% of displayed volume, roughly 15 cents per $100 traded. That is a cash-cost-to-volume comparison, not a return on invested capital. It leaves peak positions and the amount each wallet needed outside the calculation.
Two announcement checks answer a separate timing question
Questions raised by security analyst Alex Goldenberg and newsletter author Matthew Wein prompted a separate review of law-enforcement disclosures. For the April 27, 2026 capture of Audias Flores-Silva, MSR used a Mexican federal security official’s 20:20:03 UTC post as the public disclosure and checked it against wire coverage. The contract recorded no trades in the preceding hour. Its largest trade over the preceding 24 hours was $28.40. April event and counting window
The first buy came ten minutes and seventeen seconds after the post. Eight trades totaling $585.61 moved the price from 34 to 99 cents during the disclosure hour. That is observed post-disclosure activity, rather than evidence of trading before the announcement.
April 27: the first subsequent buy came after the disclosure
Flores-Silva contract · UTC · event-relative sequence
- Prior 24 hoursLargest trade: $28.40The contract had traded before the final-hour window.
- Final hour before disclosure0 tradesThe defined pre-disclosure test.
- 20:20:03Public disclosure postedTimestamped security-official post.
- 10 minutes 17 seconds laterFirst subsequent buyEight trades totaled $585.61 within the disclosure hour.
At disclosure, 490.23 Yes shares were outstanding with a then-current value of $74.49. Hypothetically buying all at that value and later receiving $1 per share would leave $415.74 before costs. MSR did not observe that trade. The largest actual gain by a pre-disclosure holder was $100.94, and the wallet had first appeared during the market’s opening week.
For the August 5 charges-and-rewards announcement, four named contracts recorded no trades between the prior day’s sealed indictments and the public announcement. The next 72 hours contained one $4.50 buy, placed more than an hour after the press conference began. Three subjects had already appeared in public reports; only one was a new disclosure in this comparison. These checks apply to the named markets and windows, rather than a general conclusion about insider trading. August event and limits
The pair recurred, but the later totals remain unreconciled
An August 27 update found the pair again after displayed volume in the Juan Reyes Mejía González market rose from roughly $200 to $33,300. It supplied 99.4% during a 189-second August 25 episode. MSR also found an earlier Hugo Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytan episode and a separate Eurovision market with $22,494.94 over 166 seconds. Later episodes
The name check distinguishes Juan Reyes, “R-1,” from Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala, reported as “El R1.” The Juan Reyes trades preceded the August 26 announcement by a day. MSR found no Juan Reyes-specific news in that trading window, which does not establish what the wallets knew or why they traded.
The later API reconstruction covered four cartel episodes
August 27 update · these figures are separate from the original blockchain totals
| Contract · episode date | Pair volume | Market share | Pair cash result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ruiz Velasco · May 27 | $59,891.39 | 98.6% | −$122.61 |
| Valencia González · April 15 | $57,178.17 | 97.5% | −$41.83 |
| Juan Reyes · August 25 | $33,064.51 | 99.4% | −$102.85 |
| Mendoza Gaytan · April 15 | $785.40 | 20.0% | +$357.00 |
−122.61 − 41.83 − 102.85 + 357.00 = +89.71 dollars
The later API reconstruction gave $117,069.56 in volume and a $164.44 combined loss for the original two contracts, compared with $117,153.35 and $171.71 in the blockchain reconstruction. The reason for those differences remains unresolved. Neither set is silently substituted for the other. Across four cartel episodes, the later reconstruction showed a positive combined result of $89.71; that wider population cannot replace the original two-contract loss.
The recurring paired trades, the two announcement checks and the unresolved reconstruction differences are distinct findings. Keeping their markets, periods and measurement bases explicit preserves what each establishes without assigning controllers or trading purpose. Unresolved questions