Soldier charged with using classified intel to win US$400K on Maduro raid is being released on bail

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gives a press conference at the Miraflores presidential palace, March 12, 2020, in Caracas, Venezuela. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

RALEIGH, N.C. — A U.S. special forces soldier who took part in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be released on bond on charges accusing him of using classified information about the operation to win more than US$400,000 in an online prediction market, a federal magistrate said Friday.

The magistrate in North Carolina ordered Gannon Ken Van Dyke to be released on a $250,000 bond and told him to report to a New York federal courthouse by Tuesday to continue his case there.

• U.S. special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning US$400,000 on Maduro raid

Van Dyke said little during the nearly hour-long hearing, during which he was appointed a federal public defender.

Federal prosecutors say Van Dyke used his access to classified information about the operation to capture Maduro in January to win money on the prediction market site Polymarket.

Van Dyke, who is stationed at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, North Carolina, was charged Thursday with the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

He could face years in prison. A publicly listed phone number listed for Van Dyke isn’t in service.

Van Dyke, 38, was involved for about a month in the planning and execution of capturing Maduro, according to the New York federal prosecutor’s office. He signed non-disclosure agreements promising to not divulge “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, but prosecutors say he used what he knew to make a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by Jan. 31.

“This involved a U.S. soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post.

Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, said it found someone trading on classified government information, alerted the Justice Department and “co-operated with their investigation.”

Massive profits from well-timed bets aroused public attention days after the raid in Venezuela and brought bipartisan calls for stricter regulation of the markets, where people can wager on just about anything.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, announced Thursday that it had filed a parallel complaint against Van Dyke.

That complaint alleges that Van Dyke moved $35,000 from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account on Dec. 26 — a little over a week before U.S. forces flew into Caracas and seized Maduro.

Van Dyke made a series of bets on when Maduro might be removed from power, according to the complaint. He placed those bets between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2, with the vast majority occurring the night of Jan. 2 — just hours before the first missiles struck Caracas.

The bets resulted in “more than $404,000 of profits,” the complaint says.

“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took action that endangered U.S. national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman.

Gary D. Robertson, The Associated Press