Manhattan: Judge Won’t Toss Case Against Soldier Over $400,000 Maduro Polymarket Bets
- A federal judge in Manhattan has refused to throw out the case against an Army Special Forces soldier accused of using secret details of the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro to win about $400,000…
- U.S.
- Prosecutors say Van Dyke took part in Operation Absolute Resolve, the mission that ended with the capture of Maduro and his wife on Jan.
A federal judge in Manhattan has refused to throw out the case against an Army Special Forces soldier accused of using secret details of the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro to win about $400,000 on Polymarket.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett denied Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke’s motion to dismiss in an opinion filed late on Oct. 26, 2026, Courthouse News Service reported. Van Dyke, who is stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, faces five counts: unlawful use of government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, wire fraud, commodities fraud and an unlawful monetary transaction. He has pleaded not guilty. The charges have not been proven in court.
Prosecutors say Van Dyke took part in Operation Absolute Resolve, the mission that ended with the capture of Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3, 2026. Despite signing nondisclosure agreements, he placed Polymarket bets totaling about $34,000 in the days before Maduro’s removal, and his shares were worth more than $400,000 once the markets settled, according to the government.
His lawyers argued that Polymarket event contracts are not “swaps” under federal commodities law and that the charges were unconstitutionally vague. Prosecutors said the contracts fit the legal definition because payment depended on events, U.S. military action in Venezuela and Maduro’s removal, that carry a potential financial, economic or commercial consequence.
Garnett did not decide that question. She wrote that the court “need not wade into the thicket of the parties’ interpretive dispute at this stage because Van Dyke’s motion can succeed only if the event contracts alleged in the indictment cannot be swaps as a matter of law, and Van Dyke has failed to make that showing.” She called the vagueness challenge premature.
The trial is tentatively set for Dec. 7, 2026. On Oct. 27, 2026, prosecutors asked the judge to let Defense Department witnesses testify “using pseudonyms and light disguises” and to bar courtroom sketches of them, Courthouse News reported.
Court records from North Carolina show how the case began. Van Dyke made his first court appearance on April 24, 2026, before a magistrate judge in Raleigh on an indictment issued in the Southern District of New York, according to the docket in that case (No. 5:26-mj-01654). The government did not seek to detain him, and he was released and ordered to appear in New York on April 28, 2026.
On Sept. 27, 2026, Game Empress covered a separate prediction market fight, New York’s lawsuit against Polymarket US over alleged unlicensed gambling.
Featured image: The Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan in May 2026. Photo: Flickr user 83136374@N05 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
