Maria, a former Venezuelan prosecutor living in Houston, Texas, won’t use the word "happy".

But in August, when she saw that the United States had doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, she said she felt “validated".

The reward now sits at $50m, one of the highest bounties ever offered by the US government.

To Maria, the bounty is a path to toppling a government steeped in human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention and torture. She fled Venezuela in 2017 and spoke under a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.

But experts warn that US President Donald Trump's strategy of dangling million-dollar rewards for Maduro's capture could backfire, leading to further instability in Venezuela.

“There’s just an assumption that, once we g

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