Summary
- The CFTC said it filed a civil insider-trading case against a US Army soldier accused of betting on Polymarket using nonpublic classified information about a military operation.
- Investigators said the defendant bought more than 436,000 shares in contracts tied to whether Maduro would be removed in January and made more than $404,000 in profit.
- The CFTC said the case is the first to apply insider-trading allegations to trading in prediction markets based on event contracts, and it is seeking disgorgement, civil penalties, trading bans and a permanent injunction.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed a civil insider-trading case against an active-duty US Army soldier accused of using military operational intelligence to bet on a prediction market.
The agency said in a complaint filed April 23 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a North Carolina-based active-duty soldier, used nonpublic classified information related to an operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to place bets on Polymarket.
According to the CFTC, Van Dyke used inside information obtained while participating in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve. Between late December 2025 and early January 2026, he bought more than 436,000 shares of contracts tied to whether Maduro would be removed in January, generating more than $404,000 in profit.
The CFTC is seeking disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, trading bans and a permanent injunction. It described the case as the first to apply insider-trading allegations to prediction-market trading based on event contracts.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said fraud, market manipulation and insider trading would not be tolerated in any market. The defendant, he added, profited from information that could have endangered national security and the lives of service members.
David Miller, the agency's enforcement director, said government personnel have a duty to safeguard confidential information. The case is meant to send a signal that the agency will aggressively police the misuse of inside information in prediction markets, he said.
The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York is also pursuing criminal charges over the same allegations.
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