It took almost five months for US law enforcement to track down and bring to court a suspect who allegedly profited by more than $400,000 by using insider information about the US military's capture of Venezuela's former leader, Nicolás Maduro.
While it's not known exactly when Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, was arrested, he was presented before a judge yesterday and charged with unlawfully using confidential government information to wager on the leading prediction market platform, Polymarket.
According to the court documents, Van Dyke participated in the planning and execution of Maduro's capture on January 3rd this year.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that the soldier, in December 2025, created an account on Polymarket and started trading on Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets, betting "Yes" on several events related to a possible US invasion into Venezuela and ousting of Maduro.
Per the court documents, Van Dyke bet around $33,000 in total, and when all the markets he bet on resolved to "Yes" after the capture, the soldier made almost $410,000.
According to the allegations, the suspect sent most of his proceeds to a "foreign cryptocurrency vault" before depositing them into a newly created online brokerage account, and also asked Polymarket to delete his account, claiming he had lost access to the email address associated with the account.
"Widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security information fully apply," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was quoted as saying in the announcement.
Additionally, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint against Van Dyke, seeking restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans, among other things.
Meanwhile, Polymarket itself responded to the news, saying that when it identified a user trading on classified government information, it referred the matter to the DOJ and cooperated with its investigation. In March, the multi-billion-dollar platform published its enhanced market integrity rules to combat insider trading.
"So you got the small fish, what about all the big fish?" a commenter online reacted to Polymarket's post.
As reported by Cybernews, manipulation and insider trading are only part of the problems the rapidly growing industry of prediction markets faces.
The aftermath of Maduro's capture also triggered a wave of cyberattacks, as a Chinese-linked cyberespionage group targeted US government and policy-related officials with Venezuela-themed phishing emails in the days following the operation.
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