US Special Forces Soldier Arrested For Polymarket Bets On Maduro Raid (wired.com)
- Reference: 0181962706
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/24/0539242/us-special-forces-soldier-arrested-for-polymarket-bets-on-maduro-raid
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/us-special-forces-soldier-allegedly-profited-off-of-maduro-capture-on-polymarket/
> The Department of Justice [1]announced Thursday that it arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the US Army's special forces, for allegedly using "classified, nonpublic" information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to [2]notch more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket trades . A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Van Dyke is the first person to be charged with insider trading on a prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have been voicing concerns for months about the high likelihood that politicians and public servants could use nonpublic information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have exploded in popularity over the past year. The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations. [...] After Van Dyke's arrest was made public, Polymarket posted a statement to social media noting that it had "identified a user trading on classified government information" and "referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation." The company declined to comment further.
>
> According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and assigned to the Army's Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations. [...] The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro's arrest and that he was aware that he wasn't authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information "by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise." The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account "displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query" outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including "operational details that are not available to the public." [...] Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-soldier-charged-using-classified-information-profit-prediction-market-bets
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/us-special-forces-soldier-allegedly-profited-off-of-maduro-capture-on-polymarket/
Rules are for the little people (Score:5, Informative)
âoeRoughly $580 million worth of oil futures changed hands in a single minute early Monday morning, only about 15 minutes before President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. had been engaged in âoeproductive conversationsâ with Iran to end the war. Now Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is calling what he sees: treason.â [1]https://fortune.com/2026/03/24... [fortune.com]
[1] https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/paul-krugman-treason-oil-futures-trading-trump-white-house/
Re: (Score:2)
> via free and fair elections.
People learn by example. And, to date, no good examples of these exist.
BREAKING: Thing Used as Designed (Score:2)
What did they think would happen?
Re: (Score:2)
What's the point of having a war if someone can't profit from it?
Re: (Score:2)
The president does it weekly and nothing happens. [1]https://oilprice.com/Latest-En... [oilprice.com]
[1] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Traders-Placed-430M-Bets-Minutes-Before-Trump-Extended-Iran-Ceasefire.amp.html
Re: (Score:2)
The president has immunity. And he can (probably) pardon himself. We'll see what happens after his second term.
Did anyone bet on this outcome? (Score:2)
Someone should have put money on whether the guy who made $400k would be arrested.
Disallow stock trading / betting for certain level (Score:1)
This is why politicians and people in power should not be allowed to trade stock or bet on apps like this. They have reached a certain level of power that a law should kick in forbidding them of making any trades until they leave their post. Should solve issues with individuals making gains on non-public information. Now if they give insider information to their friends in exchange for something in return, that's another issue. That being said, it is less often that these people want to share in the wealth
Re: (Score:2)
Trading on inside information should be illegal. Unfortunately, most members of Congress have large stock portfolios before they enter office. What's your plan? Make them turn it all over to a financial advisor? I'm not clear how that would completely eliminate the issue. A Congressman can still see something in the works that could in general drop the stock market or cause it to rise. For the former, they can just suddenly need some money for personal needs and ask the advisor to sell some stock to raise X
Re: (Score:2)
Disallow most betting altogether, it creates too many perverse incentives.
No derivatives, no prediction markets, no sports betting, no lending stock. Don't need any of it.
It's a machine for making corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
I weighed in on this yesterday, so I'll try to keep this shorter. The purpose of these platforms is to enable people to profit from inside information, either because they're the decision-makers or they're in the room with the decision-makers, literally or figuratively. It's gambling, and almost all of it is rigged.
And as bad as this is, it's not the worst of it. These prediction markets possess knowledge of these bets and can sell it for a fortune . If five minutes from now I set up an account there and put $10,000 into a bet that the US Navy will fire on Chabahar (it's an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman) within the next 24 hours, how much do you think the IRGC will pay to be instantly notified of that, before it goes live on their site? And do you think, for even a moment, that the thugs running Kalshi and Polymarket would hesitate to sell it to them? (By the way, this is a fabricated example. I picked it at random.)
TL;DR: this is an ongoing national security disaster, and isolated prosecutions like the one in this case will do little, if anything, to mitigate it.
Lucky guy! (Score:2)
Guess who's getting a pardon in 3.....2....1...
Re: (Score:1)
> Guess who's getting a pardon in 3.....2....1...
He's not rich enough to get a pardon.
huge win for sports betting! (Score:2)
IANAL but if he is found guilty there will be some legal precedent to say that prediction markets are in fact securities exchanges and not gambling. I think they could have just tried him for wire fraud if they didn't want to make this precedent.
Guilty of not being rich already (Score:5, Interesting)
After all these grifters are using inside knowledge with impunity and nothing is going to happen to them. This guy wasn't wealthy enough to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Congress has been insider trading for decades...
Re: (Score:2)
Interestingly, the last restrictions against insider trading by Congress were passed (bipartisan) under Obama. The issue is again being raised. Possibly due to recent incidents.
It appears that, while slow, the system does work.
Re: (Score:2)
Guilty of not sharing. He could have bought a million of trumpcoins and the matter would have not been brought to your attention.
Re: (Score:2)
Couldn't even pay for Trump jr's shoelaces.
He'll be hung for making Polymarket look even worse, assuming jr doesn't cut ties with them.