US Authorities Arrest Green Beret Over Alleged Insider Trading on Venezuela Raid

The US Department of Justice has arrested a Green Beret on charges of unlawfully using government secrets for personal gain, theft of non-public information, and fraud. Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke allegedly utilized his knowledge of an impending raid on Venezuela to place $33,000 in bets, yielding around $400,000 in winnings after the operation. According to US Attorney Jay Clayton, 'The defendant allegedly breached the trust placed in him by the US Government by leveraging classified information about a sensitive military operation to place bets on the timing and outcome of that very operation, all for personal profit.' Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account and placed 13 bets between December 26, 2025, and January 2, 2026, on contracts related to US forces landing in Venezuela, removing Maduro, and similar events. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is also pursuing an insider trading complaint in federal court. Van Dyke, an active-duty soldier with the US Army Special Forces, was involved in planning and executing the military operation to detain Maduro. After the raid, he allegedly withdrew the funds, converted them to a bridged version of USDC, and transferred them to a foreign cryptocurrency 'vault' before moving them into a brokerage account. The filing notes that news organizations had noticed the large profit made on these Polymarket bets, and Van Dyke attempted to conceal his identity by asking Polymarket to delete his account and changing his email. Polymarket stated that it had referred the matter to the DOJ and cooperated with their investigation after identifying a user trading on classified government information. US President Donald Trump expressed his disapproval of using confidential information for prediction market bets, stating, 'The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.'