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Two Drug Enforcement Administration whistleblowers are demanding a $50 million reward on behalf of sources who helped provide information critical to the capture and extradition of ex-Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
The informants infiltrated “every node” of Maduro’s regime and then risked their lives to get tips about the Caracas strongman’s precise whereabouts back to the the DEA and high-level military members, according to the whistleblowers.
The veteran federal law enforcement officers — Wesley Tabor, a onetime DEA attaché in Venezuela, and an undercover agent identified only as “Mack “— told independent journalist Catherine Herridge in a new interview that those informants should be “rewarded” for the risks they had undertaken.
“I felt good, felt like we did something right,” Mack told Herridge, “and in my mind the sources at least would be rewarded and everybody would be rewarded at that point.”
Tabor, in a sworn Jan. 12 affidavit, testified about activating the source network and later providing briefings in September 2025 to retired Gen. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, and John Moynihan, a former money laundering and intelligence specialist at the DEA.
The affidavit noted Maduro’s “exact locations” as well as that of his protective detail, as well as information on military installations, bunker schematics, underground tunnels and gold stockpiles — all of which were later passed along by Flynn and Moynihan to federal authorities.
The whistleblowers also noted in their interview on “Straight To The Point” that intelligence was fed directly to a contact associated with the US Army’s elite Delta Force at Fort Bragg, NC.
“I’m 100% confident that our intelligence, in the totality of everything that we were providing, was a great contributor to their successful operation and it saved lives and it produced the arrest and turnover of Nicholas Maduro,” Tabor said.
The Venezuelan tipsters, he told Herridge, were motivated by “patriotism for their country” and acting on behalf of “their friends taken, arrested, tortured and killed over and over and over.”
“Not only that, but their families, what are their children and their grandchildren going to have?” Tabor asked. “And they’re looking for a way that they can make it better.”
“And part of that is when you look at Uncle Sam saying, ‘We’re going to have $50 million reward,’ then they could say, ‘You know what? This is a real opportunity to make these changes. Not only that, but then have an effective means for us to get out of here if we’re burned.’”
On Aug. 7, 2025, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program publicly offered up to $50 million “for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolás Maduro for violating US narcotics laws.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio joked the morning after the Jan. 3 raid on Maduro’s residence that that the US had “saved $50 million” by carrying out the successful mission with special forces soldiers.
“Don’t let anybody claim it. Nobody deserves it, but us,” Trump added.
According to Tabor, his sources have communicated that they are now “despondent” and doubt they’ll ever see the reward offered.
“We’ve been communicating with them and we’re starting an effort to raise funds separately to help them because we have all these people, including children and so forth, that are in hiding in different countries and we have to relocate them to a more stable and safe environment, and that takes money,” he said.
“So we’re taking upon ourselves to look for the funds and provide the funding we need to move them,” he added.
Mack claimed the tipsters have effectively been “abandoned” and are at “risk of death.”
“They’re being hunted down,” he told Herridge.
Both also expressed concerns about the message to would-be sources hoping to cooperate with Washington.
“I think what happens is you’re going to have a lack of cooperators that are in the right locations, in the right place, at the right time,” Tabor said. “They’re going to be hesitant.”
“And when you have this hesitancy to come forward and to help, it’s going to be a detriment to all these programs around the globe that we’re offering these rewards.”
Reps for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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