By Douglas Gillison and Anirban Sen
NEW YORK, April 24 (Reuters) – A U.S. Army soldier charged with placing bets tied to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on the Polymarket platform was blocked from opening an account on prediction market Kalshi, a person familiar with the matter said.
The soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces, made $400,000 from a series of bets he placed in December and early January on Polymarket. According to the complaint by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the soldier tried to create an account on another unnamed event contracts platform, but that platform blocked him on or around December 26, 27 and 28.
That platform was Kalshi, the source said, a detail first reported by Reuters. The source requested anonymity as the matter is confidential.
In the weeks leading up to Maduro’s capture on January 3, Van Dyke used classified information to place several bets on Polymarket that U.S. forces would enter Venezuela and that Maduro would be out of power, according to the complaint.
A grand jury indicted Van Dyke in Manhattan federal court on charges of 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 CFTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HEIGHTENED SCRUTINY
The case marks the first time that the Justice Department has filed insider trading charges involving a prediction market platform, and comes as such platforms are attracting increased scrutiny from lawmakers.
In March, both Kalshi and Polymarket updated their rules to highlight that certain types of bets, which included wagers made using confidential information and illegal tips, would not be allowed on their respective platforms. Those rules affected Polymarket’s offshore trading venue, and also its U.S.-regulated platform, which recently secured the required licenses to operate in the U.S. and is currently in beta mode.
Van Dyke was able to place the Maduro bets using an account that he created on Polymarket’s offshore trading venue, according to the CFTC complaint. When he tried to open an account at Kalshi, the platform’s safeguards that include ID requirements blocked him, the source said.
Unlike other U.S.-based prediction market platforms, Polymarket’s users on its offshore platform do not have to provide any form of identification to open accounts and start trading, a separate source familiar with the situation said. Polymarket did not immediately provide comment on its account opening procedure.
“Today proved just how easy it is to find & charge criminal insider trading when markets are onchain. It’s not anonymous — you will be found just like this guy,” Polymarket’s Chief Legal Officer Neal Kumar said in a post on X on Thursday following Van Dyke’s indictment.
Reuters could not immediately identify a defense lawyer for Van Dyke. According to the local television broadcaster WTVD, he appeared shackled before a judge on Friday morning and was provisionally released after posting a $250,000 unsecured bond. He asked for court-appointed counsel ahead of a court appearance in New York on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York and Douglas Gillison in Washington; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Megan Davies and Lisa Shumaker)
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