A soldier involved in the US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the mission to win more than $400,000 (about £296,400) betting online.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, was involved in the planning and execution of capturing Maduro for about a month before it happened on January 3, according to the federal prosecutor’s office.
He is accused of using sensitive information relating to the operation to make a series of bets on prediction market site Polymarket relating to Maduro leaving power by January 31.
Van Dyke had signed nondisclosure agreements promising to not divulge “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, prosecutors said.
He has been charged by the Justice Department with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
The charges mean he could face years in prison.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Van Dyke had allegedly taken advantage of his position “to profit off of a righteous military operation”.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission – the federal agency that regulates prediction markets – has also filed a parallel complaint against Van Dyke.
It alleges that he moved $35,000 (£26,000) from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account on December 26, a little over a week before US forces would fly into Caracas and seize Maduro.
Van Dyke is then accused of using more than $32,500 (£24,000) to make a series of bets between December 30 and January 2, just hour before the first missiles would fall on
He allegedly placed those bets between December 30 and January 2, with the vast majority occurring just hours before the first missiles would fall on the Venezuelan capital.
The bets on Maduro leaving power resulted in more than $404,000 (£299,400) of profits, the complaint said.
Bets on three other Venezuela-related contracts netted the solider more than $5,000 (£3,700), according to the document.
“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about US operations and yet took action that endangered US national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman.
Van Dyke allegedly put most of the money he won in a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account, and then asked Polymarket to delete his account, claiming he’d lost access to his email, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
US lawmakers are considering legislation to ban prediction markets from allowing bets on war, assassinations or terrorist attacks, after several new Polymarket accounts won money on whether a ceasefire deal would occur between the US and Iran.
On Wednesday, online betting market Kalshi fined and suspended three congressional candidates who allegedly wagered on the outcome of their own elections.
This is not the first time Polymarket has faced controversy.
French police are investigating whether national weather forecasting equipment was tampered with after multiple successful bets were made on a series of unusual temperature readings in April.
One account made $14,000 (about £10,300) for correctly predicting temperatures would jump to 22°C on the evening of April 6, despite them averaging at 18°C for the afternoon, CNN reported.
Another made $20,000 (around £14,800) for predicting a similar spike on April 15.
Cybercrime experts are now looking into what happened following a police complaint from Météo-France.
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