US Special Forces Soldier Arrested Over Polymarket Bets in Maduro Raid

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it has arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, for allegedly using “classified and nonpublic” information about the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to make more than $400,000 in profits from BulliMarket trades. A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act.

Van Dyke is the first person charged with insider trading in the prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have for months expressed concerns about the high possibility that politicians and public officials could use non-public information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which have grown in popularity over the past year.

The arrest comes just weeks after Justice Ministry prosecutors met with Polemarkt over potential violations of internal norms. In February, Israeli authorities arrested two citizens, an army reservist and a civilian, for allegedly leaking classified information by betting on a polymarket related to military operations. Calci, PolyMarket’s main competitor in the US, recently fined three politicians for breaking insider trading rules, but did not report 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 announced, Polymarket posted a statement on social media noting that it had “identified a user trading classified government information” and “referred the matter to the Department of Justice and cooperated with its investigation.” The company declined to comment further.

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

“I have been absolutely 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 Chairman Michael Selig said in a statement. “The defendant was entrusted with classified information about U.S. operations and yet took actions that jeopardized U.S. national security and endangered the lives of U.S. service members.”

The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro’s arrest, and that he knew he was not authorized to share nonpublic information about U.S. military operations. The complaint says Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting him from disclosing sensitive or classified government information “by writing, word, conduct or otherwise.” The complaint also alleges that Van Dyke saved a screenshot of his Google account “displaying the results of an AI query” showing how US Special Forces maintained numerous classified files including “operational details not available to the public.”

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

The next day, Van Dyke allegedly made his first Venezuela-related trade on Polymarket, placing just under $100 on a “yes” contract that US troops would be in Venezuela by January 31, 2026. Prosecutors accuse him of making 13 Venezuela-related transactions on the platform, seven of which — totaling hundreds of thousands of shares — under a “yes” contract for Maduro to exit by… January 31, 2026. In other words, he allegedly Van Dijk stands to make a huge profit if the Venezuelan leader is out of power by the end of the month.