Federal authorities on Thursday charged a Special Forces soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro with using inside information about the raid to win roughly $400,000 through bets placed on online prediction markets.
Prosecutors accused Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an active-duty U.S. Army soldier involved in the planning and execution of the U.S. operation, of using his access to classified information to place a series of wagers on Maduro’s future and whether U.S. forces would enter Venezuela through Polymarket, one of a number of sites offering users the opportunity to place bets on real world events.
Hours after U.S. forces descended on a compound in Caracas on Jan. 3 to capture the Venezuelan leader and his wife, Van Dyke anonymously earned a hefty payday, authorities said.
Van Dyke, 38, faces charges including commodities fraud, wire fraud, theft and using confidential government information for personal gain. It was not immediately clear from public court dockets whether he had retained an attorney.
The case against Van Dyke is believed to be the first time the Justice Department has prosecuted an insider trading case based on prediction market betting, an industry that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months and calls for stiffer regulations that would bar users, especially those working in government roles, from trading on sensitive or confidential nonpublic information.
“Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain,” said Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Manhattan-based Southern District of New York, where the charges against Van Dyke were filed. In a statement, he added: “Those entrusted to safeguard our nation’s secrets have a duty to protect them and our armed service members, and not to use that information for personal financial gain.”
The series of well-timed bets prosecutors say Van Dyke anonymously placed late last year quickly drew attention in the days after the U.S. operation to bring Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face narco-terrorism charges in federal court in Manhattan.
Polymarket data showed that in the week leading up the Jan. 3 raid an anonymous trader began placing small bets on a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. According to the indictment, Van Dyke’s first wager came Dec. 27, when he made a $96 bet on contracts that would pay out if U.S. forces were in Venezuela by Jan. 31. Over the following week, the same user steadily increased the stakes, concentrating on a narrow set of contracts tied to Maduro’s fate — including bets that would pay off if he were no longer in power by the end of the month, a scenario most users still viewed as remote.
The last wager was placed at 9:58 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 2, just before a U.S. operation deposed the Venezuelan president. When news of the U.S. operation to capture him broke in the early morning hours of Jan. 3, the contracts surged in value. By the end, the trader had turned roughly $34,000 in wagers — more than half placed hours before the operation — into more than $400,000 in profit.
Prosecutors said that before cashing out his winnings that same day and as U.S. forces were preparing to transfer Maduro to a U.S. base, Van Dyke posted a photo of himself on a military ship at sea wearing combat fatigues, carrying a rifle and standing alongside three other service members.
Later that day, Van Dyke allegedly transferred most of the proceeds to a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then a newly created online brokerage account before withdrawing the majority of the money.
As the word of the suspicious trade spread widely online, Van Dyke took steps to conceal his identity as the trader, prosecutors said. He asked Polymarket to delete his account three days after the Maduro raid, claiming he’d lost access to the email address with which his account had been associated, according to the indictment. He also changed the email registered to his cryptocurrency exchange account to one not directly registered under his name, prosecutors said.
Van Dyke, an 18-year veteran who enlisted in 2008, was detained Thursday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he will face preliminary court proceedings before being transferred to Manhattan for trial. Most recently stationed at Fort Bragg, he was promoted in 2023 to the rank of Master Sergeant, the Army’s second-highest enlisted rank, authorities said.
A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on Van Dyke’s arrest, referring all questions to Justice Department officials.
“Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security information fully apply.”
The case against Van Dyke comes as lawmakers in Washington have increasingly raised alarm about the possibility of government employees using access to inside information to profit through prediction market bets. Last month, the White House warned staff against insider trading amid a string of reports highlighting suspicious trades tied to the ongoing conflict in Iran.
Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, announced in October that it planned to start its own prediction market. But asked Thursday about Van Dyke’s arrest and concerns about other government insiders illegally cashing in, the president expressed concerns over the boom in event-betting platforms.
“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” he told reporters, adding, “I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually.”
Polymarket, in a statement posted to social media, noted that it first publicly identified the suspicious trade, reported it to law enforcement and cooperated with the Justice Department investigation.
“Insider trading has no place on Polymarket,” the statement read. “Today’s arrest is proof the system works.”
Jeremy B. Merrill, Tara Copp and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
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