Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are handcuffed and escorted by heavily armed federal agents to a Manhattan federal courthouse in an armored vehicle after landing at a helipad in Manhattan, January 5, 2026, in New York City.
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A U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant major has been arrested on suspicion of using classified information to place highly lucrative bets in polymarket prediction markets in connection with the U.S. military mission that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
The Justice Department said Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke “was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve,” which arrested President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in early January.
Van Dyke, 38, knew the U.S. was secretly planning military action against Maduro and placed about $33,000 in about 13 bets in the week leading up to the operation, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Van Dyke won nearly $410,000 from this bet, according to the indictment.
His arrest comes amid the growing popularity of Polymarket and Kalsi and growing concerns that people with inside information are placing bets on these prediction market platforms.
“Last month, we announced enhanced market integrity rules to combat insider trading,” Polymarket said in a statement.
“When we identified a user who was trading in confidential government information, we referred the matter to the Department of Justice and cooperated with the Justice Department’s investigation,” the company said in a statement. “There is no room for insider trading in polymarkets. Today’s arrests are proof that the system works.”
Mr. Van Dyke was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the U.S. special forces involved in capturing the Maduros were stationed.
He is scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge in federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on Thursday night.
Van Dyke is charged with three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, one count of wire fraud, and one count of illegal financial transactions. If convicted of the most serious charge, wire fraud, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, and each of the remaining charges could carry up to 10 years in prison.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, has filed a separate civil complaint against Van Dyke for allegedly using confidential non-public information to place bets related to the operation to capture Maduro.
Both the criminal and civil lawsuits against Van Dyke were filed in federal court in Manhattan. This is the same court where Mr. Maduro is indicted on narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons charges, and where Mr. Flores is indicted on cocaine conspiracy and weapons counts.
According to the criminal indictment, Van Dyke became involved in planning the Maduro Mission on Dec. 8, and on Dec. 26 he created a polymarket account and began trading in markets related to issues related to Maduro and Venezuela.
The indictment against Van Dijk says he placed bets at Polymarket between December 27, the night before the Caracas attack that ended with Maduro’s arrest, and January 2.
All of these bets have taken a “YES” position to a deal that would see U.S. troops stationed in Venezuela by January 31, 2026. Maduro will likely step down by that date. The US will invade the country by January 31st. Otherwise, the indictment says, President Donald Trump will invoke the War Powers Act against the country by that date.
After his bet paid off and he earned a profit of 12 times his stake, Van Dyke transferred most of his winnings to a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then deposited them into a new online brokerage account, the Justice Department announced.
When news outlets reported the unusual trading of Maduro-related contracts on Polymarket (matching the amounts detailed in the indictment that Mr. Van Dyke won by gambling), “Mr. Van Dyk then took steps to conceal his identity as a trader in Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets,” the Justice Department said.
“For example, on or about January 6, 2026, Mr. Van Dyke falsely claimed that he no longer had access to the email address associated with his account and requested that his Polymarket account be deleted,” the Justice Department said.
“On the same day, Mr. Van Dijk changed the email associated with his cryptocurrency exchange account to an unsubscribed email address created on or about December 14, 2025, in his own name.”
“You know, unfortunately, the whole world has become kind of like a casino,” Trump told reporters Thursday at the White House, when asked about Van Dyke’s arrest and other cases of suspected insider trading in prediction markets.
“If you look at what’s going on around the world, in Europe and everywhere, they’re making these bets,” Trump said. “I wasn’t really buying into this. I don’t like it conceptually, but it is what it is…I’m not happy with any of it.”
The New York Times reported in January that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is “an investor and unpaid advisor in Polymarket, two major prediction markets, and a paid advisor to Calci.”
“Our nation’s men and women in uniform are trusted with sensitive information to carry out their duties as safely and effectively as possible, and they are prohibited from using this sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement regarding Van Dyke’s arrest.
“While broad access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, federal laws protecting national security information fully apply,” Blanche said.
