The U.S. Justice Department has arrested an American soldier who allegedly made over $400,000 betting on Polymarket about when Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, according to a press release from the federal agency.
The special forces soldier, identified as 38-year-old Gannon Ken Van Dyke, participated in the “planning and execution” of the mission to kidnap Maduro, the leader who was seized by the U.S. military in Venezuela in January, along with his wife, and brought back to New York to face charges of drug trafficking.
Van Dyke allegedly made 13 different bets from Dec. 27, 2025, to Jan. 26, 2026, according to the DOJ, staking $33,034 in total, including a wager that Maduro would be removed from office by Jan. 31.
Van Dyke won, allowing him to allegedly profit by $409,881, according to the DOJ. At least $56.6 million worth of bets were placed on Polymarket by others around the time Maduro would leave office, according to the Wall Street Journal. The soldier allegedly stashed his winnings in a foreign cryptocurrency vault before creating a new online brokerage account for the money.
After news of suspicious trades about Venezuela started to get attention in the press, the DOJ alleges Van Dyke tried to cover his tracks:
Van Dyke then took steps to conceal his identity as the trader in the Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets. On or about January 6, 2026, for example, Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his Polymarket account, falsely claiming that he had lost access to the email address to which the account had been associated. That same day, Van Dyke changed the email registered to his cryptocurrency exchange account to an email address that was not subscribed to in his name, and which he had created on or about Dec. 14, 2025.
Stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Van Dyke has been charged with “unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction,” according to the DOJ press release.
The arrest of Van Dyke is believed to be the first time that the U.S. Justice Department has pursued a case of insider trading in the relatively new prediction markets space, according to ABC News. The two largest prediction market platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, are rife with insider trading, but the companies have made signals recently that they would crack down on the practice.
This week, Kalshi took action against three people who have run for elected office in the U.S., including Senate candidate Mark Moran, an independent running in Virginia. Moran, a former contestant on the reality dating show FBoy Island, was fined $6,229 for betting on his own race but says he did it on purpose to get caught so that he could talk about how these betting sites are “dangerous to our democracy.”
The current head of the DOJ is Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former personal attorney. Blanche became the acting Attorney General after the president fired Pam Bondi.
“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,” Blanche said in a statement posted online.
“Widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security information fully apply,” Blanche continued.
Kash Patel also released a statement Thursday, claiming that, “Any clearance holders thinking of cashing in their access and knowledge for personal gain will be held accountable.”
Incidentally, President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to both Polymarket and Kalshi.
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