U.S. Special Forces Soldier Arrested for Profiting $400,000 from Insider Trading on Maduro's Arrest

The defendant is identified as Gannon Ken Van Dyke. According to federal investigators, he placed bets exceeding $33,000 on the Polymarket platform hours before President Trump announced Maduro’s capture. This series of bets ultimately netted him over $409,000, sparking widespread questioning within the prediction market sector and triggering a months-long investigation into insider trading.

Van Dyke has been formally charged with illegally using confidential information for personal gain, misappropriating non-public government information, commodity fraud, and wire fraud. The indictment alleges that after placing his bets, he noticed unusual trading activity related to the military mission and subsequently attempted to destroy evidence – trying to delete his Polymarket account and change the email address associated with his cryptocurrency trading account.

The indictment quotes, "Van Dyke was entrusted with a duty to maintain the confidentiality of the aforementioned classified information, yet he chose to exploit this confidential intelligence by placing bets on a prediction market for personal financial gain. Afterwards, he attempted to conceal his unlawful use of government confidential information, diligently covering up the source of his illicit profits, and disguising his connection to the related illicit trading accounts."

According to data released by Polymarket, Van Dyke created an account in December 2025 and placed a total of $33,933 in bets on four predictions, including "U.S. Invasion of Venezuela" and "Maduro's Arrest." The largest bet – $32,537 that Maduro would be removed from power by January 31st – ultimately yielded a 1242% return, earning $404,222.

A Polymarket spokesperson stated that the platform proactively handed over suspicious trading leads to the Department of Justice and fully cooperated with the investigation. The platform posted a statement on social media X saying, "Insider trading has no place on Polymarket. Today’s arrest demonstrates that this system works."

This arrest and prosecution are considered the first time the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit regarding insider trading on prediction markets. Polymarket is the world’s largest prediction platform, allowing traders to bet on future events in an anonymous "yes/no" contract format. Prediction markets are primarily regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), but suspicious trading appearing on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket has raised significant concerns about insider trading.

In addition to Van Dyke’s $400,000 bet on Maduro, another Polymarket user profited approximately $550,000 through a series of bets involving "U.S. Strikes on Iran" and "Supreme Leader Khamenei's Removal." U.S. Southern District Federal Prosecutor Jay Clayton confirmed in an interview in early March that his office’s prosecutors were actively researching legal tools applicable to such behavior. "My prosecutors are looking at what kinds of insider trading-like laws we can invoke," he said in an interview with CNBC.

Legal expert and former U.S. federal prosecutor Noah Solowiejczyk, a partner at Fenwick & West, pointed out that prosecutors could file a lawsuit citing relevant provisions of the decades-old Commodity Exchange Act. This provision explicitly prohibits federal government employees or agents from trading using confidential government information in their possession. However, he also cautioned that explaining the operation of prediction markets to a jury in layman’s terms would be a major challenge in this case. "How to distill everything and make it understandable to a jury is often the difficulty the government faces in cases involving new technologies that jurors may not be familiar with," he said.

While this arrest is a first for U.S. authorities, there are precedents for such cases internationally. In February, an Israeli reservist and a civilian were charged in Israel for using confidential information to bet on Polymarket.

U.S. Senator Proposes Ban on Government Officials’ Involvement in Prediction Markets Following Attention to Maduro and Iran-Related Bets.