Army Special Forces Soldier Charged with Wire Fraud for Betting on Venezuela Raid

The Army Special Forces soldier criminally charged in connection with making hugely profitable bets on Polymarket related to the U.S. military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was released Friday on an unsecured $250,000 bond after appearing in federal court in Raleigh, N.C.

Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke was ordered to appear Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he has been indicted on wire fraud and other charges related to allegedly using classified information about the planned operation to win nearly $410,000 from the bets and then trying to cover up the scheme.

Kalshi, Polymarket's leading competitor in the prediction markets sector, confirmed on Friday that it had blocked Van Dyke from opening a Kalshi account. Elisabeth Diana, a spokeswoman for Kalshi, said she could not give details of when the 38-year-old Van Dyke tried to open an account or why he was prevented from doing so.

Van Dyke, who has served in Army since 2008, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, where he is based at Fort Bragg. Van Dyke was involved in planning and executing the Jan. 3 raid in Caracas that ended with U.S. Special Forces capturing Maduro and his wife and putting them on a Navy ship to be sent to the U.S., where they face federal drug charges in the same court where Van Dyke was recently indicted, prosecutors said.

In the week leading up to the raid, Van Dyke opened a Polymarket account and then began making a series of wagers on contracts on questions of whether U.S. forces would be in Venezuela by Jan. 31, whether Maduro would be out of office by that date and on related questions, the indictment alleges. He allegedly wagered about $33,000 in more than a dozen bets, according to the indictment, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, has separately charged Van Dyke in a civil complaint with three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act in connection with the alleged bets.

Van Dyke's arrest is the latest in a series of controversies involving prediction markets, whose growing popularity has raised concerns about gambling addiction and about people with inside information exploiting their knowledge to wager on event contracts.

On Friday, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, introduced a bill that would bar U.S. senators from trading on prediction markets. On Wednesday, a day before Van Dyke's arrest, Kalshi revealed it had fined and suspended one Senate candidate and two candidates for the House of Representatives for trading on their own campaigns.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a CNBC minority investment.