The U.S. Division of Justice arrested a grasp sergeant with the Military on allegations he positioned wagers on the raid of Nicolas Maduro forward of taking part within the operation to detain former Venezuelan chief.
The DOJ unsealed an indictment Thursday charging Gannon Ken Van Dyke with the illegal use of confidential authorities data for private achieve, theft of nonpublic authorities data and fraud costs, alleging he used his data of the forthcoming raid on Venezuela to position $33,000 in bets, successful about $400,000 after the raid.
“The defendant allegedly violated the belief positioned in him by america Authorities by utilizing categorised details about a delicate army operation to position bets on the timing and end result of that very operation, all to show a revenue,” U.S. Lawyer Jay Clayton mentioned in a press release. “That’s clear insider buying and selling and is prohibited underneath federal legislation.”
Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account on Dec. 26, 2025 and positioned 13 bets by Jan. 2, 2026 on contracts anticipating whether or not U.S. forces would land in Venezuela, take away Maduro, invade Venezuela and comparable contracts.
In tandem with the legal pursuit, the U.S. Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee is pursuing an insider buying and selling grievance in federal court docket, the company mentioned in a Thursday assertion.
“The defendant was entrusted with confidential details about U.S. operations and but took motion that endangered U.S. nationwide safety and put the lives of American service members in hurt’s method,” mentioned CFTC Chairman Mike Selig.
Van Dyke is an lively obligation soldier with the U.S. Military Particular Forces, colloquially often called “inexperienced berets,” and was based mostly out of Fort Bragg. In response to the indictment, he “was concerned within the planning and execution” of the army operation to detain Maduro.
After the raid, Van Dyke allegedly withdrew the funds, transformed the winnings to a bridged model of USDC, despatched them to “a international cryptocurrency ‘vault'” after which started withdrawing funds and transferring them right into a brokerage account, the submitting mentioned.
The submitting famous that the very fact somebody had made an enormous revenue on these Polymarket bets had been seen by information organizations, and it alleged that Van Dyke requested Polymarket to delete his account and altered his e mail to aim to hide his id.
In a publish on X (previously Twitter), Polymarket mentioned, “once we recognized a person buying and selling on categorised authorities data, we referred the matter to the DOJ [and] cooperated with their investigation.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, throughout a press scrum, instructed reporters that he would look into allegations of federal reporters putting prediction market bets utilizing confidential data, Bloomberg reported.
“The entire world, sadly, has change into considerably of a on line casino,” he mentioned. “And also you have a look at at what’s happening everywhere in the world, in Europe and each place they’re doing these betting issues. I used to be by no means a lot in favor of it. I don’t prefer it conceptually.”
UPDATE (April 23, 2026, 20:35 UTC): Provides CFTC, Trump feedback.
UPDATE (April 23, 2026, 20:45 UTC): Provides Polymarket publish, clarifies function of inexperienced berets.
