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A US Army Special Forces soldier has been arrested and charged with using classified information about the military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to place prediction market bets that netted him more than $400,000.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, prediction markets are online platforms where users bet real money on the outcomes of real-world events (everything from elections to geopolitical events to whether specific world leaders will be removed from power). The two biggest platforms, Polymarket and Kalshi, both have ties to Trump’s inner circle. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and adviser to Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi. The CFTC, which regulates prediction markets, dropped its legal fight against Kalshi in May 2025, opening the door for the company to offer markets on political events. These companies have partnered with news outlets to integrate their data into news content. To be transparent, our company has entered a multiyear partnership with Kalshi to incorporate their prediction market data in some articles we write.

What’s going on now: The DOJ announced Thursday that Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke (a special forces soldier involved in the January 3 raid that captured Maduro) had been using classified knowledge of the operation to place prediction market bets on Polymarket before it went public. Prosecutors say Van Dyke opened a Polymarket account on December 26, concealed where he was logging in from with a VPN, and placed 13 bets totaling roughly $33,000 between December 27 and January 2 (the night before the operation). He bet that Maduro would be removed from power and that the US would take military action against Venezuela.

Once the $400,000 hit his account, Van Dyke moved it to an offshore crypto wallet, and three days after the raid, he reached out to Polymarket to delete his account. The indictment also says a photo hit his Google account just hours after the operation, showing him at sunrise aboard US Navy vessel, rifle in hand, fatigues on, standing with three other uniformed men.

Van Dyke faces charges including wire fraud, unlawful use of confidential government information, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, and an unlawful monetary transaction (with a maximum exposure of 20 years on the wire fraud count alone). The CFTC filed a separate civil complaint, marking the first time the agency has ever used the so-called “Eddie Murphy Rule” (a 2010 Dodd-Frank provision making it illegal to trade commodities based on stolen or misappropriated government information).

When asked about the arrest Thursday, Trump compared Van Dyke to Pete Rose. “That’s like Pete Rose betting on his own team,” he said, adding that “the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.”