US soldier charged with using classified intelligence to win bet on Maduro raid

A US special forces soldier involved in the operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the mission to win more than 400,000 dollars (£296,500) in an online betting market, officials said.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke was part of the operation to capture Maduro in January and used his access to classified information to make money on the prediction market site Polymarket, the federal prosecutor’s office in New York said.

He has been charged by the Justice Department with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction. He could face years in prison.

Van Dyke, 38, was involved in the planning and execution of capturing Maduro for about a month beginning on December 8 2025, according to prosecutors.

Even though he signed non-disclosure agreements promising to not divulge “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, prosecutors say the army soldier used this information to make a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by January 31 2026.

“This involved a US soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation,” FBI director Kash Patel said in a post to social media.

Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets in the world, said it had found someone trading on classified government information, alerted the US department of justice and “cooperated with their investigation”.

This involved a U.S. soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation.

Thank you to our agents, Intel teams, and great partners @TheJusticeDept who protected our war fighters.

Investigation ongoing. https://t.co/Adn4K19r3J

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) April 23, 2026

“Insider trading has no place on Polymarket,” the company said in a statement.

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

That complaint alleges that Van Dyke moved 35,000 dollars (around £30,000) from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account on December 26 – a little over a week before US forces would fly into Caracas and seize Maduro.

Van Dyke used more than 32,500 dollars (around £24,000) to make a series of bets on when Maduro might be removed from power, according to the complaint.

He placed those bets between December 30 and January 2, with the vast majority occurring the night of January 2 – just hours before the first missiles would fall on Caracas.

In the early hours of January 3, US president Donald Trump posted on his social media platform a photo of the now-captured Venezuelan leader, wearing a grey sweatsuit, headphones and a blindfold.

The bets Van Dyke made on Maduro leaving power resulted in “more than 404,000 dollars (£299,500) of profits,” the complaint said. Bets on three other Venezuela-related contracts netted the solider more than 5,000 dollars (£3,700), according to the document.

“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about US operations and yet took action that endangered US national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman.

The massive profits from the well-timed bets aroused public attention days after the raid and brought bipartisan calls for stricter regulation of the markets where people can wager on just about anything.