A federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted U.S. Army Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke on five counts arising from his alleged use of classified military intelligence to place winning bets on the Polymarket prediction platform, the Department of Justice announced April 22, 2026 [1]. Van Dyke allegedly netted approximately $409,881 across 13 trades before authorities unsealed the charges in the Southern District of New York [1].
The indictment centers on Operation Absolute Resolve, a January 2026 U.S. military mission directed at capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro [1]. Van Dyke, assigned to U.S. Army Special Forces, allegedly had access to classified details of that operation and used that foreknowledge to place bets on Polymarket, a commodities-regulated prediction exchange, before the mission's existence became public [1]. The five charged offenses are: unlawful use of classified government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction [1]. The commodities fraud count is legally significant because the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulates prediction markets like Polymarket as commodity contracts, allowing federal prosecutors to apply securities-adjacent insider trading theories to a national security context.
The case was filed in the Southern District of New York, which handles a substantial share of complex financial fraud prosecutions [1]. The FBI investigated the matter [1]. Prosecutors did not publicly identify cooperating witnesses or describe how investigators connected Van Dyke's military access to his Polymarket account activity, though wire fraud charges typically require proof that the defendant used electronic communications in furtherance of the scheme.
The indictment sets up what legal observers are likely to watch as a test of how existing fraud and classified-information statutes apply to prediction market trading. No analogous prosecution, charging a service member with using operational military intelligence to profit on a CFTC-regulated exchange, appears to have been brought previously. Van Dyke faces potential consecutive sentences across the five counts if convicted. Arraignment and bail proceedings in the SDNY were not detailed in the initial charging announcement, and a trial schedule has not been set [1].