The US Department of Justice has arrested an Army master sergeant, accused of betting on Nicolas Maduro’s raid before participating in the operation to arrest the former Venezuelan leader.
The DOJ on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging Gannon Ken Van Dyke with illegal use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information and fraud charges, alleging he used his knowledge of the upcoming raid on Venezuela to place $33,000 in bets, winning 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 same operation, all for the purpose of profit,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “This is clearly 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 U.S. forces would land in Venezuela, eliminate Maduro, invade Venezuela, and similar contracts.
Along with the criminal prosecution, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is filing an insider trading complaint in federal court, the agency said in a statement Thursday.
“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took actions that endangered U.S. national security and put the lives of U.S. service members at risk,” CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said.
Van Dyke is an active-duty soldier with the U.S. Army Special Forces, based at Fort Bragg. According to the indictment, he “was involved in the planning and execution” of the military operation to arrest Maduro.
After the raid, Van Dyke allegedly withdrew the funds, converted the winnings to a bridged version of USDC, sent them to “a foreign cryptocurrency ‘vault'” and then began withdrawing funds and transferring them to a brokerage account, according to the filing.
The filing said that the fact that someone had made a massive profit on these bets on Polymarket was noticed by news organizations, and it alleged that Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account and changed his email address in an attempt to conceal his identity.
US President Donald Trump, during a press scrum, told reporters he would look into allegations that federal journalists placed predictive bets on the market using confidential information, Bloomberg reported.
“Unfortunately, the whole world has become somewhat of a casino,” he said. “And you look at what’s happening all over the world, in Europe and wherever they’re making these bets. I’ve never been very supportive of that. I don’t like it conceptually.”
UPDATE (April 23, 2026, 8:35 p.m. UTC): Adds the CFTC, comments Trump.
