US Special Forces Soldier Arrested for Polymarket Bets on Maduro Raid

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the US Army’s special forces, for allegedly using “classified, nonpublic” information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to notch more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket trades. A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act.

Van Dyke is the first person to be charged with insider trading on a prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have been voicing concerns for months about the high likelihood that politicians and public servants could use nonpublic information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have exploded in popularity over the past year.

The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations. In February, Israeli authorities arrested two citizens, an army reservist and a civilian, for allegedly leaking classified information by making wagers on Polymarket related to military operations. Kalshi, Polymarket’s primary rival in the United States, recently fined three politicians for breaking its insider trading rules, but it did not flag the violations for further enforcement to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that oversees prediction markets.

After Van Dyke’s arrest was made public, Polymarket posted a statement to social media noting that it had “identified a user trading on classified government information” and “referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation.” The company declined to comment further.

According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and assigned to the Army’s Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations.

“I have been crystal clear that anyone who engages in fraud, manipulation, or insider trading in any of our markets will face the full force of the law,” CFTC chair Michael Selig said in a statement. “The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about US operations and yet took action that endangered US national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way.”

The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro’s arrest and that he was aware that he wasn’t authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information “by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise.” The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account “displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query” outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including “operational details that are not available to the public.”

On December 26, Van Dyke allegedly opened an account on Polymarket and took out around $35,000 from his bank account before transferring it to a cryptocurrency exchange.

The following day, Van Dyke allegedly made his first Venezuela-related trade on Polymarket, putting a little less than $100 on a “YES” contract that US forces would be in Venezuela by January 31, 2026. Prosecutors accuse him of ultimately making 13 Venezuela-related transactions on the platform, seven of those—totaling hundreds of thousands of shares—on a “YES” contract for “Maduro out by … January 31, 2026.” In other words, Van Dyke allegedly stood to make an enormous profit if the Venezuelan leader wound up out of power by the end of the month.

Prosecutors allege that between 8 and 10 pm ET on January 2, mere hours before the overnight extraction took place, Van Dyke placed three separate transactions on the “Maduro out” contract, amounting to more than 250,000 shares.

While Van Dyke’s exact role in the Maduro operation is unclear, the Justice Department alleges that he uploaded a photo to his Google account shortly after he was transported aboard a US Navy ship. “That photograph depicts VAN DYKE on what appears to be the deck of a ship at sea, at sunrise wearing US military fatigues, and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other individuals wearing US military fatigues,” according to the indictment.

Court documents claim that Van Dyke won his “Maduro out” bets when the contract resolved on Polymarket following the January 3 raid. He allegedly sold off his remaining positions that same day and withdrew his funds from the platform. After news reports began circulating about an anonymous $400,000 payout, the indictment alleges, Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account and swapped the email address he used for his cryptocurrency account to one that was not associated with his name.

The prediction market industry has been under intense scrutiny recently over its role in facilitating insider trading, with lawmakers and politicians pushing for increased guardrails and tougher enforcement tactics. California, Illinois, and New York have banned state employees from trading on confidential information in an effort to appease growing concerns about public corruption. In addition to suspicious trading on markets related to the capture of Maduro, a series of Polymarket trades connected to Iran War markets have also raised concerns about insider activity, including the trades of an account that made over $550,000 wagering on whether the US would strike Iran and if the country’s then-leader Ayatollah Khamenei would remain in office.

Some lawmakers have publicly accused the Trump White House of participating in prediction markets using insider information, including US senator Chris Murphy, who told WIRED that staffers “inside the Situation Room” may be pushing the country into war while betting on it. The White House has denied the allegations. Earlier this month, CNN reported that the White House had warned staff against using confidential information to profit on prediction markets. The White House has not responded to WIRED’s requests for comment on that warning.

Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.