A US soldier is accused of using secret information about the capture of Nicolás Maduro to win more than US$400,000 in bets

Federal prosecutors maintain that Gannon Ken Van Dyke used his access to classified information about the operation to capture Maduro in January to make money on the prediction market site Polymarket.

Van Dyke, who was deployed to Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, North Carolina, was charged Thursday with illegal use of confidential information government for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, raw materials fraud, electronic fraud and conducting an illegal monetary transaction.

The accused could face years in prison. A publicly accessible phone number attributed to Van Dyke is not in service, and court records do not yet list an attorney for him.

Van Dyke, 38, He participated for about a month in the planning and execution of Maduro’s captureaccording to the New York federal prosecutor’s office. He signed confidentiality agreements promising not to disclose “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, but prosecutors say he used that information to place a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by Jan. 31, 2026.

“This involved a United States soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit from a just military operation,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in a social media post.

Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, said it detected a person trading classified government information, alerted the Department of Justice and “cooperated with its investigation.”

Las huge profits Derived from well-timed bets, they drew public attention days after the incursion into Venezuela and sparked bipartisan calls for tighter regulation of markets, where people can bet on almost anything.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, announced Thursday that it had filed a parallel complaint against Van Dyke.

The complaint alleges that Van Dyke transferred $35,000 from his personal bank account to an account at a cryptocurrency exchange on Dec. 26, just over a week before U.S. forces flew to Caracas and captured Maduro.

According to the complaint, Van Dyke placed a series of bets on when Maduro could be removed from power. He placed those bets between December 30 and January 2, and the vast majority were made on the night of January 2, just hours before the first missiles hit Caracas.

The complaint indicates that the bets generated “more than $404,000 in profits.”

“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took actions that endangered U.S. national security and exposed U.S. military personnel to risk to their lives,” said commission Chairman Michael Selig.