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

A US Army master sergeant, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, has been taken into custody by the Department of Justice for allegedly utilizing classified information to make bets on a Venezuelan raid, which he was involved in. The indictment, unsealed on Thursday, charges Van Dyke with unlawfully using confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, and fraud. It is alleged that he used his knowledge of the impending raid to place $33,000 in bets, ultimately winning around $400,000. According to US Attorney Jay Clayton, 'The defendant allegedly breached the trust placed in him by the US Government by using classified information about a sensitive military operation to place bets on the timing and outcome of that very operation, all to turn a profit.' Van Dyke, an active-duty soldier with the US Army Special Forces, 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 and removing Maduro. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is also pursuing an insider trading complaint in federal court. Van Dyke allegedly attempted to conceal his identity by withdrawing his winnings, converting them to a bridged version of USDC, and transferring them to a foreign cryptocurrency 'vault' before moving them into a brokerage account. The fact that someone had made a significant profit on these bets was noticed by news organizations, prompting Van Dyke to ask Polymarket to delete his account and change his email to conceal his identity. In response to the incident, Polymarket stated that they had identified a user trading on classified government information and referred the matter to the DOJ, cooperating with their investigation. 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... I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually.'