Federal prosecutors want a Manhattan judge to keep the criminal case against Army master sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke on track for trial, rejecting his bid to throw out charges over Polymarket trades that allegedly earned him more than $400,000.

In a Wednesday (August 19) filing in the Southern District of New York, the government defended all five counts. Prosecutors say Van Dyke’s legal arguments belong before a jury rather than being grounds to dismiss the indictment.

“The core theory of the Indictment is that Van Dyke took information that he had pledged to keep confidential and, though he was duty-bound not to do so, he used it to make a personal profit,” prosecutors said.

Van Dyke, 38, served with U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Prosecutors say his work on Operation Absolute Resolve gave him access to classified and other nonpublic details about the mission.

He had also signed nondisclosure agreements covering classified information. In one agreement concerning “Western Hemisphere Operations,” Van Dyke acknowledged that information he obtained through his work “is now and will remain the property of the United States Government.”

Prosecutors say he used that knowledge to trade Polymarket event contracts involving U.S. military action in Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro’s removal from power.

Prosecutors say charges suggest US soldier used classified military information for Polymarket bets

Van Dyke opened his Polymarket account on December 26, 2025, according to the filing. From December 27 through Jan. 2, he allegedly spent about $33,934 on “YES” shares tied to Venezuela and Maduro while working on the operation.

One trade included roughly 13,769 shares betting Maduro would be out of power by January 31, 2026. Prosecutors say Van Dyke paid an average of about nine cents per share, implying roughly a 9% chance of that outcome.

U.S. special forces captured Maduro and his wife in Caracas before dawn on January 3. After the operation became public, several contracts settled at $1 per “YES” share, leaving Van Dyke with more than $400,000 in alleged net profit.

A grand jury indicted him in April on five counts spanning confidential government information, commodities and swap fraud, wire fraud and an unlawful monetary transaction. Van Dyke pleaded not guilty and was released on $250,000 bail with travel restrictions.

Prosecutors have described the matter as the Justice Department’s first criminal insider-trading prosecution involving prediction markets. The CFTC also sued Van Dyke in April, bringing a parallel civil case that has produced a separate fight over dismissal and whether proceedings should pause while the criminal prosecution continues.

Van Dyke moved to dismiss the criminal indictment on July 31, arguing in part that the contracts were not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and that classified military information was not property for wire-fraud purposes.

Prosecutors say the statutory definition of swaps is broad enough to cover event contracts with potential financial, economic or commercial consequences. They also point to case law and Van Dyke’s acknowledgment that confidential information remained government property.

Van Dyke “committed an old crime on a new platform,” they said.

“Because the Indictment alleges all that it must,” prosecutors said, “the next step is trial.”

Featured image: Gannon Ken Van Dyke / Facebook

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