Federal authorities arrested a US Army special forces soldier Gannon Van Dyke on Thursday for allegedly using classified insider information from the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to place winning bets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on Polymarket - the first known instance of the Department of Justice prosecuting insider trading on such a platform.
According to the DOJ, feds claim that Van Dyke - who took part in the January 2026 "Operation Absolute Resolve" that captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores - wagered approximately $33,933 across four Polymarket contracts in the hours before President Donald Trump publicly announced the success of the raid. The largest single bet, $32,537, was placed on Maduro being out of office by January 31. When the operation succeeded and Maduro was taken into US custody, the soldier pocketed more than $404,000 on that contract alone, for a total profit exceeding $409,881.
An active-duty soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, a military base in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Van Dyke had signed nondisclosure agreements promising never to divulge classified or sensitive information relating to military operations. The indictment claims that starting around December 8, 2025, and continuing through at least January 6, 2026, he was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve, giving him access to sensitive, nonpublic, classified information about the raid.
Rest assured, the feds are coming for betting markets with hammer and tongs.The Commodities Exchange Act prohibits federal employees or agents from trading on confidential government information, but applying those rules to anonymous, crypto-based prediction markets presents novel challenges for prosecutors. US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton noted in March that his office was actively examining "laws similar to insider trading laws" for these platforms. One former federal prosecutor described the Maduro bets - which came when the market priced intervention at just 6% - as bearing “all the hallmarks of an insider trade.”
The arrest follows earlier public scrutiny of suspiciously timed Polymarket wagers, including large profits on US strikes against Iran and the removal of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In February, Israeli authorities charged an army reservist and a civilian with using classified information to bet on Polymarket.
Prediction markets have drawn massive Wall Street and institutional interest, highlighted by Intercontinental Exchange (owner of the NYSE) committing up to $2 billion to Polymarket and Coatue Management leading Kalshi’s $1 billion funding round (valuing it at $22 billion), with participation from Paradigm, Sequoia, a16z, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. Quant giants Susquehanna and Jump Trading are providing deep liquidity and equity stakes, while Goldman Sachs is actively exploring the sector and prime brokers now route hedge-fund orders into these platforms.
Meanwhile across the pond, French cybercrime police are examining claims that someone deliberately heated a Météo-France temperature sensor at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport to trigger artificial spikes and cash in on high-stakes weather wagers, according to Le Monde.
The inquiry began after Météo-France filed a formal complaint citing "physical findings on one of our instruments and the analysis of sensor data." Unusual temperature jumps coincided with large bets on the exact temperature in Paris on dates including March 12 and April 16. More than $500,000 was at stake on some days, according to the On April 15, for example, an unexpected 5°C evening spike to 19°C allowed three separate wallets to profit more than $280,000 combined. One anonymous trader placed a last-minute bet and walked away with $21,000; the same wallet also held positions on weather in Seoul and Toronto,
On Polymarket Discord channels, bettors openly joked about the anomalies. One shared an AI-generated image of a man aiming a hairdryer at a weather station near an airport runway. Another asked: "What did you do to the temperature sensor at Paris airport yesterday? Was your weapon of choice a hairdryer or a lighter?"
So, absolute dumbfucks all around.
In response, Polymarket has stopped using the Charles de Gaulle sensor for its Paris temperature markets and switched to data from Paris-Le Bourget airport.