Washington (United States) (AFP) – A US soldier faces charges for using classified information to bet on online prediction markets related to the US operation to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the Department of Justice said Thursday. US Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, allegedly made over $400,000 by using the online platform Polymarket to bet on outcomes related to US forces arriving in Venezuela’s capital Caracas and deposing Maduro — an operation he helped plan and execute, according to justice officials.
The US military launched strikes on Caracas on January 3, arresting Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and whisking them to New York to face drug trafficking charges. “Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission…and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Polymarket said in a statement it had flagged the user who made the bets to the Department of Justice and cooperated with their investigation. “Insider trading has no place on Polymarket,” the statement said. “Today’s arrest is proof the system works.” Van Dyke faces one count of wire fraud, one count of an unlawful monetary transaction and three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, according to the indictment. The indictment marks the latest instance of insider information being used to bet on the actions of the second Trump administration.
Earlier in the year, six accounts on Polymarket made $1.2 million after betting that the United States would attack Iran on February 28, the day the war in the Middle East began. No arrests have been made in connection with those bets, and so far there is no evidence US President Donald Trump or White House officials are linked to the transactions.
“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino…in Europe and every place, they’re doing these betting things,” Trump told reporters Thursday, adding: “I was never much in favor of it.”
Democratic lawmakers and other critics have accused Trump and his family of having conflicts of interest since the beginning of his second term. “The Trump family has made $4 billion off the presidency,” leftist senator Bernie Sanders wrote Thursday in a post on X with a list of alleged income sources, calling it “unprecedented kleptocracy.”
In March, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform about “very productive” talks with Iran, sending oil prices downward and stocks surging — and people who placed the flurry of futures trades beforehand likely pocketed tens of millions of dollars, according to calculations by a market operator for AFP. Members of the Trump family have also made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from cryptocurrencies, a market he has sought to deregulate.
And Trump’s son Donald Jr. is a partner at 1789 Capital, which made a multi-million investment in Polymarket last year, leading the prediction market to name him as a company adviser. If Van Dyke, who used Polymarket to wager, is convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison.
© 2024 AFP
