U.S. arrests soldier for Polymarket bets on Nicolas Maduro raid he participated in

The U.S. Department of Justice arrested a master sergeant with the Army on allegations he placed wagers on the raid of Nicolas Maduro ahead of participating in the operation to detain former Venezuelan leader.

The DOJ unsealed an indictment Thursday charging Gannon Ken Van Dyke with the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information and fraud charges, alleging he used his knowledge of the forthcoming 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 very operation, all to turn a profit,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “That is clear insider trading and is illegal under federal law.”

Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account on Dec. 26, 2025 and placed 13 bets through Jan. 2, 2026 on contracts anticipating whether U.S. forces would land in Venezuela, remove Maduro, invade Venezuela and similar contracts.

In tandem with the criminal pursuit, the U.S. 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 action that endangered U.S. national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said CFTC Chairman Mike Selig.

Van Dyke is an active duty soldier with the U.S. Army Special Forces, colloquially known as “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 to a bridged version of USDC, sent them to “a foreign cryptocurrency ‘vault'” and then began withdrawing funds and moving them into a brokerage account, the filing said.

The filing noted that the fact someone had made a massive profit on these Polymarket bets had been noticed by news organizations, and it alleged that Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account and changed his email to attempt to conceal his identity.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Polymarket said, “when we identified a user trading on classified government information, we referred the matter to the DOJ [and] cooperated with their investigation.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, during a press scrum, told reporters that he would look into allegations of federal reporters placing prediction market bets using confidential information, Bloomberg reported.

“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” he said. “And you look at at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things. I was never much in favor 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.