US soldier charged with using classified info to win bet on Maduro raid
發佈日期: 2026-04-24 21:17
TVB News
The US Justice Department said on Thursday that a US Army soldier involved in the seizure of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has been arrested on charges of making around 400,000 US dollars via betting on an online prediction market.
As alleged in the indictment, the soldier used his access to classified information about the military operation to personally profit.
In the weeks leading up to Maduro's capture on January 3rd, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old master sergeant with US Army Special Forces, opened an account on prediction platform Polymarket and made wagers 13 times beginning on December 27th, 2025, with the vast majority occurring the night of January 2nd.
Van Dyke was accused of making bets of about 32,000 US dollars on the timing and outcome of "Operation Absolute Resolve" while in possession of classified nonpublic information.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced filing a parallel complaint against Van Dyke, which alleges that the Army soldier moved 35,000 US dollars from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account before US forces would fly into Caracas and seize Maduro.
The complaint also said, the bets that Van Dyke made on the ousting of Maduro brought him "more than 404,000 dollars of profits."
The man was arrested on counts of unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, wires fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
US President Donald Trump said he's unaware of the case but would "look into it." "Well, you know, the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino and you look at what's going on all over the world and Europe and every place, they are doing these betting things. I was never much in favour of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is."
