A U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant was charged with using classified information to place bets on prediction market platform Polymarket, netting about $410,000 on wagers tied to the American military operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
The Justice Department said Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, participated in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve and used his access to nonpublic classified information about that mission to trade on Polymarket. Van Dyke was indicted on charges of unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
The trading activity began on Dec. 26, 2025, when Van Dyke opened a Polymarket account; over the following week, he made roughly 13 individual wagers totaling approximately $33,034. Every bet was a "YES" position on one of four Venezuela-related outcomes — that American troops would be present in Venezuela by Jan. 31, 2026, that Maduro would no longer hold power by that date, that a U.S. invasion of Venezuela would occur, or that Trump would invoke the War Powers Act against the country within the same window. Jan. 2 alone accounted for over $26,000 of the total wagers — a dramatic surge in activity that came just hours before the predawn Jan. 3 raid in Caracas in which U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife. Following the public announcement of the operation, Polymarket resolved several Venezuela-related contracts to "YES," and Van Dyke's total profit reached about $409,881, according to the Justice Department.
Van Dyke had been involved in the planning of the operation since Dec. 8, 2025, when he received a classified information security briefing and signed a nondisclosure agreement, according to CNBC. Prosecutors also cited a Jan. 3 image stored in Van Dyke's Google $GOOGL account that appeared to place him aboard the USS Iwo Jima — the vessel to which Maduro was brought following his apprehension — dressed in combat fatigues and holding a rifle next to three other uniformed service members.
Once the contracts resolved in his favor, yielding roughly twelve times his original stake, Van Dyke allegedly routed the bulk of the proceeds to an overseas cryptocurrency vault and then moved the funds into a newly opened brokerage account, according to the DOJ. Media coverage highlighting the suspicious pattern of trades in Venezuela-related markets prompted Van Dyke to attempt a cover-up: he contacted Polymarket seeking deletion of his account, offering the false explanation that he no longer had access to its linked email, and he re-registered his cryptocurrency exchange account under a separate email address that had been set up in a different name.
Polymarket said it identified the suspicious trading and referred the matter to the Justice Department. "Insider trading has no place on Polymarket. Today's arrest is proof the system works," the company said in a statement.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a civil complaint against Van Dyke for three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, according to CNBC.
Legal observers have described Van Dyke's indictment as marking the first time federal prosecutors have brought an insider-trading case centered on a prediction market platform. It comes amid broader concerns about insider trading on prediction platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which have grown in popularity under a hands-off regulatory approach from the Trump administration. Separately, a blockchain analytics firm identified suspected insiders who made $1.2 million on Polymarket bets placed ahead of U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, drawing calls from Democratic lawmakers for new restrictions on the industry. More than ten bills targeting prediction markets have been introduced in Congress since January, with six unveiled in March alone.
Asked about Van Dyke's arrest at the White House, Trump said, "That's like Pete Rose betting on his own team."
Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud count and up to 10 years on each of the remaining counts. He was expected to appear before a U.S. magistrate judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina, with the case assigned to U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett in the Southern District of New York.