U.S. soldier arrested for $400K winning Polymarket bets on Maduro capture, DOJ says

A U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant was arrested on a federal indictment accusing him of using classified information to make bets that won him $400,000 on the Polymarket prediction market related to the American military mission that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the Department of Justice said on Thursday. The sergeant, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, "participated in the planning and execution of the" operation to capture Maduro in early January, the DOJ said. The arrest comes as Polymarket and Kalshi have increased in popularity and as concerns have grown about people with inside information making wagers on those prediction market platforms. Van Dyke, 38, had been stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which houses U.S. military special forces who were involved in the capture of Maduro and his wife. He is expected to be presented on Thursday evening to a magistrate judge in federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Van Dyke is charged with three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act; one count of wire fraud; and one count of unlawful monetary transaction. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted of the top criminal count, wire fraud, and up to 10 years in each of the remaining counts. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, separately charged Van Dyke in a civil complaint for allegedly using classified nonpublic information to make the wagers rela