American special forces soldier arrested for earning more than $400 thousand betting on Maduro’s capture

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Van Dyke, who served at Fort Bragg and participated in the planning and execution of the operation to capture Nicolas Maduro, made about 13 bets between December 27 and the evening of January 2 that US forces would enter Venezuela and Maduro would be removed from power by the end of January.

In the pre-dawn hours of January 3, 2026, American special forces detained Maduro and his wife in Caracas. After the transaction was publicly announced, Polymarket closed the relevant contracts as winners, and Van Dyke, according to investigators, made a profit of $409,881. Prosecutors allege that he then withdrew most of the funds to a foreign cryptocurrency storage facility, then transferred them to a crypto exchange and brokerage account, and also tried to delete the account on Polymarket.

A grand jury indicted Van Dyke on charges of unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, commodity contract fraud, wire fraud and unlawful monetary transaction.

Reuters notes that this appears to be the first time the US Department of Justice has brought charges of insider trading related to the prediction market.

Polymarket said it provided the information to authorities and cooperated with the investigation.