In short
- US Army Staff Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of using classified information to profit from stock market betting.
- Van Dyke allegedly placed a bet on Polymarket about the impeachment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, making a profit of over $400K.
- This is the first federal case involving market manipulation.
A US special forces soldier paid last week and insider trading for using confidential information to place winning bets on Polymarket pleaded not guilty in a New York court on Tuesday.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old Army Master Sergeant stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, entered the bond on Tuesday and was released on $250,000. He was ordered to surrender his passport and to restrict his travel.
Van Dyke reportedly expanded his knowledge of Operation Absolute Resolve to place at least 13 bets totaling approximately $33,034. The wagers, which were placed between December 27, 2025 and January 2, 2026, focused on agreements predicting that US troops will enter Venezuela after President Nicolás Maduro is removed.
After the attack on January 3 as Van Dyke says it will, his bet made a profit of $ 409,881-and. they held their heads as he speculates about who was behind the fraudulent Polymarket account. The soldier transferred his winnings to an interest-bearing offshore account, prosecutors say, and then transferred the money to a new loan account on January 16.
Three days after the operation, he allegedly asked Polymarket to delete his account, falsely saying he had lost his email. Prior to his Polymarket stint, Van Dyke was banned from opening an account on the Kalshi prediction platform at the end of December 2025, a source familiar with the matter said. he said Decrypt.
The government’s response shows that it wants to disrupt the prediction market.
“Forecast markets are not a place for the misuse of confidential or private information for personal gain,” said US Attorney Jay Clayton, words Last Thursday. “The defendant alleges that he breached a fiduciary duty to the United States Government by using the information of dangerous military groups to bet on the timing and outcome, in order to make a profit.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche asserted that federal laws protecting national security information are fully applicable to prediction markets, noting that the proliferation of prediction markets is a new phenomenon.
Following these charges, President Donald Trump he told reporters last Thursday that he “didn’t like” the prediction markets, saying that they helped to “turn the whole world, unfortunately (into) a casino.”
Trump, however, backed off those comments on Saturday asked and Decrypt about difficult decisions related to prediction markets.
“Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “I know some people who are very smart. They like, they don’t agree.”
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