In a striking turn of events, a U.S. special forces soldier has been accused of misusing classified information from a military operation aimed at capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Federal officials revealed on Thursday that this soldier allegedly leveraged sensitive details to secure over $400,000 through an online betting platform.
According to the federal prosecutor’s office in New York, Gannon Ken Van Dyke was involved in the January operation to apprehend Maduro. He reportedly exploited his privileged access to classified data by placing bets on Polymarket, a prediction market website, to cash in on the outcome of the mission.
The Justice Department has charged Van Dyke with multiple offenses, including unlawful use of confidential government information for personal enrichment, theft of nonpublic information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and conducting an illegal monetary transaction. These serious charges could lead to a lengthy prison sentence if he is convicted.
The 38-year-old soldier’s involvement in the preparation and execution of the mission to capture Maduro began on December 8, 2025, lasting nearly a month. Despite signing nondisclosure agreements that strictly prohibited the release of any sensitive or classified details, prosecutors allege that Van Dyke used this privileged information to place a series of bets predicting Maduro’s removal from power by January 31, 2026.
FBI Director Kash Patel condemned the actions on social media, stating, “This involved a U.S. soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation.”
Efforts to reach Van Dyke were unsuccessful, as the phone number listed under his name appears to be out of service. Additionally, it remains unclear if he has secured legal representation.
Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets in the world, said it had found someone trading on classified government information, alerted the U.S. 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 federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which 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 Dec. 26, 2025 – a little over a week before U.S. forces would fly into Caracas and seize Maduro.
Van Dyke used more than $32,500 to make a series of bets on whether Maduro would be removed from power between Dec. 11, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2026, according to the complaint.
Van Dyke placed those bets between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2, 2026, with the vast majority occurring on the night of Jan. 2 – just hours before the first missiles would fall on Caracas.
In the early hours of Jan. 3, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a photo of the now-captured Venezuelan leader, wearing a gray sweatsuit, protective 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 solider more than $5,000, according to the complaint.
“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,” Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman, said in a statement.
The massive profits from the well-timed bets aroused public attention just days after the raid but Polymarket said nothing to the public at the time.
Officials allege that shortly after the operation, Van Dyke put most of the funds 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 amid accusations that he placed bets 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 Kalshi and Polymarket and an investor in the latter. Trump’s social media platform Truth Social is also launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.
Nearly two decades in the Army
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 confirmed that he was a senior enlisted soldier who was part of the special forces community and was stationed at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, North Carolina, but their indictment offered little other details about his military service.
However, the document says Van Dyke was photographed following the raid on the deck of a ship “wearing U.S. military fatigues, and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other individuals wearing U.S. 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.
Prediction markets draw scrutiny
Prediction markets let people wager on everything from sports to elections and have prompted bipartisan scrutiny from Congress and calls for stricter regulations.
Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that a group of new accounts on Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for these 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, the Kalshi prediction market fined and suspended three congressional candidates who the company said wagered on the outcome of their own elections.
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
