Polymarket under Investigation over Bets on Maduro’s Capture
USA.- April 28, 2026 www.zonadeazar.com Prediction markets have once again come under scrutiny after a US Army soldier was accused of making $400,000 by using inside information to bet on the downfall of Nicolás Maduro, a Justice Department spokesperson said on Friday.
The soldier, identified as Gannon Ken Van Dyke, was arrested on Thursday and released after posting bail of $250,000.
Van Dyke, who prosecutors say was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro’s capture on 3 January in Caracas, was arraigned on Thursday in a federal court in Manhattan on charges including transaction fraud, wire fraud and the unlawful use of confidential information for personal gain.
He could face up to 10 years in prison on four of the criminal charges and up to 20 years on a fifth, the government said.
With a beard and tattoos on his arms, Van Dyke spoke little during the hearing, which lasted nearly an hour. He was assigned a federal public defender, who subsequently declined to comment.
In ordering the release of Van Dyke, 38, on Friday, Federal Judge Brian Meyers also required him to surrender his passport and firearms, unless ordered to possess them by military mandate. Van Dyke entered neither a guilty nor a not guilty plea.
Van Dyke is due to appear on Tuesday before Federal District Judge Margaret Garnett in Manhattan, who will oversee his case.
In the first insider trading charge brought by the Department of Justice relating to a prediction market, prosecutors claimed that Van Dyke bet more than $33,000 on Polymarket between 27 December and 2 January that Maduro would soon step down and that US forces would soon enter Venezuela.
These platforms allow trading on virtually anything, from the Super Bowl to US elections and even the winners of reality shows.
A US soldier was arrested on charges of fraud and misuse of classified information after placing 13 bets on the PolymarketGemini AI platform
At the time, the markets assigned low probabilities to those events, meaning that the bets netted him over $400,000, according to the indictment.
Van Dyke withdrew the funds from Polymarket following Maduro’s capture, according to the prosecution. He then allegedly asked the betting market to delete his account, in what the prosecution described as an attempt to conceal his identity.
Polymarket stated that it referred the matter to the Department of Justice and cooperated with the investigation.
“We proactively collaborate with all relevant authorities regarding any suspicious activity on our market,” Shayne Coplan, founder and CEO of Polymarket, said in a post on X on Friday.
Van Dyke, a master sergeant in the US Army Special Forces, has been on active duty since 2008 and is stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Prosecutors stated that Van Dyke participated in the “planning and execution” of Maduro’s capture, but did not provide further details.
The indictment referred to a photograph that Van Dyke uploaded to his Google account in the early hours of 3 January, hours after the US military had transferred Maduro to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima.
“That photograph shows Van Dyke on what appears to be the deck of a ship at sea, at dawn, dressed in a US Army combat uniform and carrying a rifle, alongside three other people dressed in US Army combat uniforms,” the indictment states.
A person with knowledge of the matter said that the soldier was prevented from opening an account on the prediction markets platform Kalshi.
According to the complaint filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the soldier attempted to create an account on another unidentified event-based trading platform, but was prevented from doing so despite contacting the platform’s support service on or around 26, 27 and 28 December.
Clash
The incident took place whilst a clash is brewing in Washington over prediction markets.
In a deeply polarised Congress, the need to prevent insider trading in prediction markets has become a rare point of agreement between Republicans and Democrats. The debate over the market is also involving the White House, potential presidential candidates and state leaders.
These markets, which include Polymarket and its main rival, Kalshi, have been criticised for various reasons, ranging from undermining the integrity of sport to contributing to a crisis of online gambling addiction among young people. Polymarket has come under particular scrutiny for being a platform for offshore operations that fall outside the control of US regulators.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, sits on Polymarket’s advisory board and is a paid adviser to Kalshi. 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm of which Trump Jr. is a partner, has invested in Polymarket.
AP and Reuters
