The soldier accused in the Polymarket insider trading case pleads not guilty

American Special Forces soldier Charged last week With insider trading for allegedly using confidential intelligence to place winning bets on Polymarket, he pleaded not guilty in federal court in New York on Tuesday.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old Army sergeant stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, entered the plea Tuesday and was released on $250,000 bail. He was ordered to surrender his passport and restrict his travel.

Van Dyke allegedly leveraged his prior knowledge of the absolute solution process to place at least 13 bets totaling approximately $33,034. The bets, placed between December 27, 2025 and January 2, 2026, focused on contracts predicting the entry of US forces into Venezuela and the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro.

After the raid occurred on January 3, as Van Dyke allegedly knew would happen, his bets generated profits of $409,881 – and Grabbed the headlines With speculation mounting as to who is behind the pseudonymous Polymarket account. Prosecutors alleged that the soldier transferred his winnings into an interest-bearing foreign currency vault, then moved the funds to a newly created brokerage account on January 16.

Three days into the operation, he allegedly asked Polymarket to delete his account, falsely claiming that he had lost access to his email address. Prior to his activity at Polymarket, Van Dyke was banned from opening an account on rival forecasting platform Kalshi in late December 2025, a source familiar with the matter said. He said Decryption.

The government’s response indicates an aggressive stance towards abuse of the prediction market.

“Prediction markets are not a haven for the use of confidential or misappropriated information for personal gain,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a report. statement Last Thursday. “The defendant allegedly violated the trust placed in him by the United States government by using classified information about a sensitive military operation to bet on the timing and outcome of that particular operation, all for profit.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche emphasized that federal laws protecting national security information fully apply to prediction markets, noting that widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon.

In the wake of the accusations, President Donald Trump He told reporters last Thursday And he was “never a fan” of prediction markets, saying they helped turn “the whole world, unfortunately (into) a bit of a casino.”

But Trump walked back those comments on Saturday when… asked before Decryption About important announcements related to prediction markets.

“Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “I know some very smart people. They like it, and they disagree with it.”