How a US Soldier Turned the Maduro Seize Right into a $400,000 Windfall

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How a US Soldier Turned the Maduro Seize Right into a $400,000 Windfall

3 min learnUp to date: Apr 24, 2026 09:41 AM IST

A soldier from US particular forces concerned within the operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been arrested for utilizing labeled details about the raid to win over $400,000 in a web-based betting market, The Guardian reported.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who performed a job within the operation to seize Maduro in January, used his entry to labeled intelligence to mint an enormous sum of money on Polymarket. This buying and selling of confidential data on the prediction market web site may now lead him to years in jail.

The fees the soldier is dealing with

The fees towards him are listed as follows: illegal use of confidential authorities data for private acquire, making an illegal financial transaction, theft of nonpublic authorities data, wire fraud, and commodities fraud.

How the soldier misused confidential data

Concerned in planning and executing the operation of capturig Mduor, for a month since Dece3mber 8, he had signed paperwork promising that he wouldn’t disclose any “labeled or delicate” particulars of the raid. Nonetheless, quickly after Van Dyke created a Polymarket account bythe finish of December. He made about 13 bets taking “Sure” place on wagers as US Forces touchdown Venezuela and Maduro being taken out by Jan. 31, 2026. Officers alleged quickly after the operation, Van Dyke put a serious chunk of his successful quantity in a overseas cryptocurrency vault after which transferred into a brand new brokerage account. He even requested Polymarket to delete his account, claiming that he misplaced entry to the e-mail with which he logged in to the account.

How the unlawful transaction got here to mild

Polymarket said it had discovered that some individual buying and selling on labeled authorities data and alerted the U.S. Division of Justice. They  “cooperated with their investigation” after that. “Insider buying and selling has no place on Polymarket,” the agency mentioned in an announcement on X.

The Related Press, earlier this month, had reported {that a} group of recent accounts on Polymarket made extremely particular, well-timed bets on whether or not the US and Iran would attain a ceasefire on April 7. These fetched a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} in income to those new prospects. On the identical day because the report, the White Home warned employees towards utilizing confidential particulars to commerce on prediction markets.

What US authorities says

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“This concerned a U.S. soldier who allegedly took benefit of his place to revenue off of a righteous army operation,” FBI Director Kash Patel mentioned. A publicly listed phone quantity for Van Dyke was out of service and therefore it may niot be confirmed if he has a authorized illustration.

— with inputs from The Guardian and AP

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