US Special Forces Soldier Arrested for Betting on His Own Maduro Capture Mission via Polymarket

# US Special Forces Soldier Arrested for Betting on His Own Maduro Capture Mission via Polymarket

> **Quick answer:** US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke allegedly used classified knowledge of the Maduro capture mission to place 13 bets on Polymarket between December 27, 2025 and January 2, 2026 — turning $33,000 into roughly $410,000 in profit. The DOJ unsealed an indictment on April 23, 2026, charging him with commodities fraud, wire fraud, theft of nonpublic government information, and making an unlawful monetary transaction. It is the first known case of military insider trading on a prediction market.

A US special forces soldier who helped plan and execute the raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro allegedly turned that classified knowledge into a $410,000 windfall — placing 13 bets on Polymarket in the days before the mission launched. Now he's facing federal charges, and the case is drawing a hard legal line around prediction markets, classified information, and military ethics that didn't exist before this week.

## What Happened: Operation Absolute Resolve and the Bets That Followed

On April 23, 2026, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US Army Special Forces soldier who was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve — the mission that resulted in the apprehension of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in early January 2026.

According to the DOJ, Van Dyke created a Polymarket account in late December 2025. Between December 27 and January 2 — the days immediately preceding the raid on Caracas — he spent more than $33,000 to take "Yes" positions on 13 separate prediction market contracts. Those contracts asked whether: