WASHINGTON (AP) — A US special forces soldier involved in the American military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the mission to win more than $400,000 in an online betting market, federal officials announced Thursday.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke used his access to classified information to make money on the prediction market site Polymarket, the federal prosecutor’s office in New York said.
The US Justice Department has charged him 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. He could face years in prison.
Van Dyke, 38, was involved in the planning and execution of capturing Maduro for about a month beginning December 8, 2025, according to the federal prosecutor’s office.
Even though he signed nondisclosure agreements promising not to divulge “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, prosecutors say the army soldier used this information to place a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by January 31, 2026.
“This involved a US soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit from a righteous military operation,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on social media.
A telephone number listed for Van Dyke in public records was not in service and there is as yet no attorney listed for him in court documents.
Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets in the world, said it had found someone trading on classified government information, alerted the US Department of Justice and “cooperated with their investigation.”
“Insider trading has no place on Polymarket,” the company said in a statement.
Second complaint filed against the soldier
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US federal agency that regulates prediction markets, announced Thursday it had filed a parallel complaint against Van Dyke.
That complaint alleges that Van Dyke moved $35,000 from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account on December 26, just over a week before US forces would fly into Caracas and seize Maduro.
Van Dyke used more than $32,500 to make a series of bets on when Maduro might be removed from power, according to the complaint. He placed those bets between December 30 and January 2, with the vast majority occurring the night of January 2 — just hours before the first missiles would fall on Caracas.
In the early hours of January 3, US President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform a photo of the now-captured Venezuelan leader, wearing a gray sweatsuit, headphones and a blindfold.
The bets Van Dyke made on Maduro leaving power resulted in “more than $404,000 of profits,” the complaint said. Bets on three other Venezuela-related contracts netted the soldier more than $5,000, according to the document.
“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about US operations and yet took action that endangered US national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman.
The massive profits from the well-timed bets aroused public attention days after the raid and led to bipartisan calls for stricter regulation of the markets where people can wager on just about anything.
Officials allege that shortly after the operation, Van Dyke put most of the money he won in a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He also asked Polymarket to delete his account, saying he had lost access to his email associated with the account, according to the federal prosecutor’s office.
Trump, when asked about the case Thursday, drew parallels between the embattled soldier and late professional baseball player Pete Rose, who was banned from the sport for betting on his own team.
“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino, and you look at what’s going on all over the world and Europe and every place, they’re doing these betting things,” Trump told reporters.
The Trump administration has been a key ally of the growing prediction market industry in a critical legal fight with states seeking to ban the platforms. The president’s eldest son is an adviser for both Polymarket, its competitor Kalshi, and a Polymarket investor. Trump’s social media platform Truth Social is also launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.
Van Dyke joined the Army in 2008 and, in 2023, was promoted to the rank of master sergeant, the second-highest enlisted rank in the army, according to the indictment. Federal prosecutors said he was part of the special forces community and was stationed at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, North Carolina, but their indictment offered few additional details about his military service.
The document said Van Dyke was photographed following the raid on the deck of a ship “wearing US military fatigues, and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other individuals wearing US military fatigues.”
The Pentagon referred questions on the case to the Army and the Justice Department.
Army officials declined to provide Van Dyke’s service record. Typically, the military services are reticent to offer details about members of the special forces and take measures to keep their identities secret.
Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that a group of new accounts on Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the US and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for the new customers. On the same day the AP published the report, the White House warned staff against using private information to trade on prediction markets.
On Wednesday, Kalshi fined and suspended three congressional candidates who the company said wagered on the outcomes of their own elections.
