The story reads like a movie script. Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an active-duty Special Forces soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has just been arrested, accused of using classified information to win a fortune betting on Polymarket about Nicolás Maduro’s capture. Information that he himself helped execute.

Van Dyke directly took part in the planning and operation of Absolute Resolve, the overnight raid that pulled Maduro from the presidential palace under heavy fire on January 3, 2026. Between December 27 and January 2, while the mission was still in preparation, he opened an account and placed 13 bets against the clock.

He wagered about 32,000 dollars that Maduro would be “out” of power before January 31. The bet, considered a long shot at the time, left him more than 404,000 dollars in profit. When the operation unfolded and the contract resolved, the soldier had already channeled the jackpot to a foreign cryptocurrency vault.

The alarms went off fast. The bets were so disproportionate that Polymarket analysts and specialized media detected the move as possible insider information. When Van Dyke saw the case was being investigated, he tried to delete his account and change the email linked to his crypto wallet. It did not work.