A 38-year-old Green Beret now finds himself fighting a criminal case at home. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US Army Special Forces master sergeant, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to charges that he turned secret details of the US mission to seize Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro into a six-figure score on an online prediction market, NBC News reports. Van Dyke's lawyer says his client is on leave from the military "the ultimate status is unsettled at this point," per Politico. He had been an active-duty soldier since 2008, and prosecutors say he "participated in the planning and execution" of the Venezuela raid.
Prosecutors say Van Dyke, stationed at North Carolina's Fort Bragg, used classified information about the January raid that captured Maduro and his wife to place 13 bets totaling about $33,000 on Polymarket, ultimately netting more than $409,000. The bets included topics like US forces entering Venezuela and Maduro being removed from office, which had been assigned low probabilities at the time, the Guardian reports. He's accused of commodities fraud, wire fraud, theft and unlawful use of nonpublic government information, among other counts. The indictment alleges he cashed out most of the proceeds the day of the operation, then asked Polymarket to delete his account three days later. Polymarket's CEO says the platform flagged and reported the activity and cooperated with authorities. Van Dyke was released on a $250,000 bond with travel limits; his next hearing is in June.
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