A Special Forces soldier at Fort Bragg has been indicted for allegedly placing Polymarket bets on a raid he participated in—netting over $400,000.
Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, was part of the planning and execution of the raid—called “Operation Absolute Resolve”—that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3. According to the indictment, he placed several bets on U.S. military actions in Venezuela in the days leading up to the raid.
Van Dyke is charged with three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, each of which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison. He is also charged with one count of wire fraud, which has a maximum sentence of 20 years, and one of an unlawful monetary transaction, which carries a 10-year maximum sentence He is also facing a lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
According to the civil lawsuit, Van Dyke has been active-duty special forces since September 2008 and a master sergeant since 2023. Over his Army career he signed several nondisclosure agreements related to sensitive information—including one on December 8, the day he began participating in planning the Maduro raid, according to the indictment.
About three weeks later, on December 26, he created a Polymarket account, according to the indictment, using a virtual private network that made his account appear to be in a foreign country. Over the next few days he bought Polymarket “contracts” on 13 different occasions.
Polymarket is one of several online betting markets that provide contracts on whether a future event will occur. People can pay somewhere between 0 and $1 for a “yes” or “no” contract. A correct position is worth $1 once the event occurs or a deadline passes; an incorrect position is worth nothing.
Van Dyke spent $33,034 buying “yes” positions, according to court documents. Most of them were bets that Maduro would be ousted by Jan. 31—ultimately, he purchased more than 436,000 such “yes” positions, according to the civil suit. He also bought “yes” positions that U.S. Forces would be in Venezuela, that the U.S. would invade Venezuela and that President Donald Trump would invoke War Powers Act against Venezuela all by January 31.
The contracts were purchased between December 27 of last year and January 2—hours before the raid. On January 3, several of the contracts paid out and Van Dyke sold the rest at a profit, netting Van Dyke $409,881, according to court documents.
As news broke of the raid—and the suspicious Polymarket payouts—Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account on Jan. 6 and took other steps to cover his digital tracks.
All Department of Defense personnel are expected to “uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct,” Col. Allie Scott, spokesperson for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said in a statement to CityView. “All DoD personnel should seek to avoid or resolve situations that call into question the impartiality or integrity of DoD Personnel or programs.”
Scott added that all Defense Department personnel are banned from using an official office for “personal financial gain.”
Special Operations Command did not provide any information about whether any other soldiers have faced non-criminal sanctions for similar actions or whether any specific guidance has been given to members of special forces regarding betting markets.
On Thursday, Trump compared the alleged actions of Van Dyke to Pete Rose, who was banned from Major League Baseball in 1989 for betting on games.
“That’s like Pete Rose betting on his own team,” Trump said, according to ABC News. “Pete Rose, they kept him out of the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. Now, if he bet against his team, that would be no good, but he bet on his own team. I’ll look into it.”
Van Dyke appeared in federal court on Friday in North Carolina and was approved for a federal public defender. He was released on an unsecured $250,000 bond and ordered to appear Tuesday in federal court in the Southern District of New York, where the indictment was issued.
The address listed for Van Dyke in the civil lawsuit was purchased in Fayetteville on February 26. There are also at least five other properties in Cumberland County that list a Gannon Van Dyke as the owner.
He does not appear to have any prior criminal cases, according to a search of North Carolina judicial records, and does not appear in a search of public Army court martial records.