Federal authorities arrested a U.S. Army special forces soldier, Gannon Van Dyke, on Thursday for allegedly using classified insider information from the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to place winning bets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on Polymarket — the first known instance of the Department of Justice prosecuting insider trading on such a platform.
According to the DOJ, feds claim that Van Dyke — who took part in the January 2026 “Operation Absolute Resolve” that captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores — wagered approximately $33,933 across four Polymarket contracts in the hours before President Donald Trump publicly announced the success of the raid.
Note: the original story’s title said Special Forces soldier, but there’s yet to be any confirmation of the man’s actual unit. Special Forces are Green Berets. A SOF soldier (SOF = Special Operations Forces) could mean someone from a Tier 1 unit like CAG/Delta, or someone from the 160th Special Operations Regiment, etc. The title here has been changed to reflect that uncertainty.
The largest single bet, $32,537, was placed on Maduro being out of office by January 31. When the operation succeeded and Maduro was taken into U.S. custody, the soldier pocketed more than $404,000 on that contract alone, for a total profit exceeding $409,881.
An active-duty soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, a military base in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Van Dyke had signed nondisclosure agreements promising never to divulge classified or sensitive information relating to military operations. The indictment claims that starting around December 8, 2025, and continuing through at least January 6, 2026, he was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve, giving him access to sensitive, nonpublic, classified information about the raid.
Rest assured, the feds are coming for betting markets with hammer and tongs.The Commodities Exchange Act prohibits federal employees or agents from trading on confidential government information, but applying those rules to anonymous, crypto-based prediction markets presents novel challenges for prosecutors. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton noted in March that his office was actively examining “laws similar to insider trading laws” for these platforms. One former federal prosecutor described the Maduro bets — which came when the market priced intervention at just 6% – as bearing “all the hallmarks of an insider trade.”
The arrest follows earlier public scrutiny of suspiciously timed Polymarket wagers, including large profits on U.S. strikes against Iran and the removal of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In February, Israeli authorities charged an army reservist and a civilian with using classified information to bet on Polymarket.
Read the original article in its entirety on Zero Hedge.
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I 100% agree this schmuck tried to scam a betting site and should be prosecuted. This is EXACTLY what our sitting representatives do with the stock market, and one evil SHREW who sits in California comes to mind! With zero repercussions on them!