Polymarket prediction market website displayed on a computer screen on January 11, 2026 in New York.
Wyatt Grantham Phillips | AP
An Army special forces member criminally charged with gambling for huge profits in polymarkets in connection with the U.S. military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro appeared in federal court in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday and was released on $250,000 unsecured bail.
Sergeant Major Gannon Ken Van Dyke was ordered to appear in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday. He is charged in court with wire fraud and other charges related to allegedly using confidential information about a planned operation to obtain approximately $410,000 in gambling and then attempting to conceal that plan.
Calci, Polymarket’s main competitor in the prediction markets space, acknowledged on Friday that it had blocked Van Dijk from opening a Calsi account.
Elizabeth Diana, a spokeswoman for Mr. Carsi, said she could not provide details about when Mr. Van Dyke, 38, attempted to open an account or why he was prevented from doing so.
Van Dyke, who has served in the Army since 2008, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, where he is based at Fort Bragg.
Mr. Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of the Jan. 3 attack in Caracas in which U.S. military special forces captured Mr. Maduro and his wife on a Navy ship and shipped them to the United States, where prosecutors said they faced federal drug charges in the same court where Mr. Van Dyke was recently indicted.
The indictment says Van Dyke opened a Polymarket account in the week leading up to the attack and began a series of bets on contracts regarding whether U.S. troops would be in Venezuela by January 31, whether President Maduro would leave office by that date, and related questions.
He is accused of placing about $33,000 in more than a dozen bets, according to the indictment, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, separately indicted Van Dyke in a civil complaint on three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act in connection with the gambling allegations.
Prediction market controversy
Van Dyke’s arrest is the latest in a series of controversies involving prediction markets, whose growing popularity has raised concerns about gambling addiction and people with inside information misusing their knowledge to bet on event contracts.
On Friday, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) introduced a bill that would ban U.S. senators from trading in prediction markets.
On Wednesday, the day before Van Dyke’s arrest, Carsi announced that he had fined and suspended one Senate candidate and two House candidates for dealing with his campaign.
Polymarket CEO Shane Coplan said in a post on X on Friday that the company had notified the Department of Justice about suspicious activity in Van Dyke’s account.
“We are grateful that the Department of Justice has formally acknowledged Polymarket’s cooperation in this matter. All noise aside, the fact is that we are actively cooperating with all relevant authorities regarding suspicious activity on the Marketplace,” Coplan said.
“We informed this, we referred to it and we cooperated throughout the process,” he said. “Despite what many people are led to believe, this happens all the time behind the scenes.”
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes a minority investment in CNBC.
