A US soldier pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges of using classified intelligence on the raid and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolàs Maduro to win $400,000 on prediction market betting site Polymarket.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke is a 38-year-old US special forces soldier who was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro’s capture. He placed bets December 26 on PolyMarket voting that Maduro would be out of power by January 31. Early January 3, Maduro and his wife were captured by the US army, thus fulfilling the PolyMarket prompt.
Following his successful betting relating to Maduro outcomes, Van Dyke allegedly withdrew the majority of his proceeds from his Polymarket account and sent them to a foreign cryptocurrency vault. He then took steps to conceal his identity as a trader in the Maduro market and requested on January 6 that his account be deleted on the claim that he lost access to the email address linked to his account. According to CEO Shayne Coplan, Polymarket flagged the suspicious activity and turned it over to the government.
Van Duke was subsequently charged for unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction. The FBI Director announced that the charges make clear that no one is above the law, and that by using classified information for financial gain, Van Dyke not only participated in insider trading but betrayed his fellow soldiers.
Van Dyke pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan Federal Court, with his defense lawyer Zach Intrater asserting that he has committed no crimes. This case stirs controversy as some states have started pushing for the ban of prediction betting platforms like Polymarket. Essentially, people input predictions on anything from a basketball game outcome to a a world political event and then place binary wagers (Yes or No) with a minimum dollar amount tied to the success of their vote.
The fear has been that these unregulated markets create breeding grounds for insider trading and other illegal gambling activity. However, the Trump administration seems to be supporting these markets; with Donald Trump Jr. joining Polymarket as their Strategic Advisor in 2025, and the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CTFC) suing individual States to remind them that only the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction of Prediction Markets in all 50 States, even if gambling is illegal in that State.
