Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Army special forces soldier, accusing him of using his insider knowledge of the clandestine military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January to reap more than $400,000 in profits on the popular prediction market site Polymarket.
The Justice Department says Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, who was stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, was part of the team that planned and carried out the predawn raid in Caracas earlier this year that resulted in the apprehension of Maduro.
The Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed the actions against Van Dyke, the first time U.S. officials have leveled criminal charges against someone over prediction market wagers.
Court records show Van Dyke now faces counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud, misusing non-public government information, and other charges.
Hours after Maduro was arrested, Van Dyke was pictured on the deck of a warship in military fatigues and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other military officials, according to the indictment.
Before the photo was taken, he began trading under numerous usernames including “Burdensome-Mix,” allegedly placing bets totaling $32,000 that Maduro would soon be out of power, resulting in winnings exceeding $400,000.
Van Dyke, according to prosecutors, abused his access to information about the classified operation and tried to cover it up by hiding behind pseudonymous Polymarket accounts.
“It’s not anonymous – you will be found just like this guy,” said Neal Kumar, Polymarket’s chief legal officer.
While Van Dyke is the first to be charged in the U.S. for suspected Polymarket insider trading, Israeli authorities in February arrested several people and charged two on suspicion of using classified information to place bets about military operations in Iran on Polymarket.
The Biden administration cracked down on Polymarket and forced it to wind down its U.S. operations.
The Trump administration, however, has given the controversial site a warmer reception, dropping a criminal investigation and allowing the company to open a separate U.S. exchange overseen by regulators in Washington, putting at least one of its sites on similar footing as its main competitor, Kalshi.
The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket.
Not long before the charges were announced on Thursday, President Trump answered a reporter’s question about government insiders profiting on prediction market sites, saying he condemns the practice.
“Well, the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” said Trump, who once owned several casinos in Atlantic City, NJ. “I was never much in favor of it, I don’t like it conceptually,” he said of prediction market sites. “It’s a crazy world, it’s a much different world than it was.”
