The US Department of Justice arrested a master sergeant in the army on allegations that he bet on the attack on Nicolas Maduro ahead of taking part in the operation to detain the former Venezuelan leader.
The DOJ unsealed an indictment Thursday charging Gannon Ken Van Dyke with illegal use of classified government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information and fraud charges, alleging he used his knowledge of the impending raid on Venezuela to place $33,000 in bets and win about $400,000 after the raid.
“The defendant allegedly violated the trust placed in him by the United States government by using classified information about a sensitive military operation to place bets on the timing and outcome of that particular operation, all for profit,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “This is clear insider trading and is illegal under federal law.”
Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account on December 26, 2025 and placed 13 bets through January 2, 2026 on contracts predicting whether US forces would land in Venezuela, remove Maduro, invade Venezuela and similar contracts.
Along with the criminal prosecution, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is pursuing an insider trading complaint in federal court, the agency said in a Thursday statement.
“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took actions that endangered U.S. national security and endangered the lives of U.S. service members,” CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said.
Van Dyke is an active duty soldier in the US Army Special Forces, colloquially known as the “Green Berets”, and was based out of Fort Bragg. According to the indictment, “he was involved in the planning and execution” of the military operation to detain Maduro.
After the raid, Van Dyke allegedly withdrew the funds, converted the winnings into a bridge version of USDC, sent them to “a foreign cryptocurrency ‘box'” and then began withdrawing funds and moving them into a brokerage account, the filing said.
The filing noted that the fact that someone had made a massive profit on those Polymarket bets had been noted by news organizations, and it claimed that Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account and changed his email to try to hide his identity.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Polymarket said, “when we identified a user who was trading classified government information, we referred the matter to the DOJ [and] cooperated with their investigation.”
US President Donald Trump told reporters during a news conference that he would investigate allegations of federal reporters placing predictive market bets using classified information, Bloomberg reported.
“Unfortunately, the whole world has become a bit of a casino,” he said. “And you look at what’s going on around the world, in Europe and all the places where they’re making these bets. I’ve never been much of a fan of it. I don’t like it conceptually.”
UPDATE (April 23, 2026, 20:35 UTC): Adds CFTC, Trump comments.
UPDATE (April 23, 2026, 20:45 UTC): Adds Polymarket post, clarifies role of Green Berets.
