U.S. authorities allege that a soldier engaged in insider trading on the prediction market Polymarket to illegally profit from his advance knowledge of U.S. military plans to capture former Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a complaint in the U.S. district court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) against an active service member of the U.S. army, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, alleging that he breached derivatives rules by engaging in insider trading on Polymarket based on classified information regarding U.S. military plans.
According to the CFTC’s complaint, between December 2025 and January 2026, Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of the military operation to capture Maduro. And, it alleged that during that period, Van Dyke also used his knowledge of those plans to purchase more than 436,000 shares of a contract listed on Polymarket concerning whether Maduro would be ousted by the end of January.
The trading generated more than US$404,000 in profits, the CFTC alleged.
“This case marks the first time the CFTC has charged insider trading involving event contracts, and the first time the CFTC has used the so-called ‘Eddie Murphy Rule’ to bring charges based on the misuse of government information,” said the CFTC’s director of enforcement, David Miller, in a release.
The “Eddie Murphy rule” is a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank reform that sought to enhance transparency and accountability on Wall Street in the wake of the global financial crisis — and refers to Murphy’s 1983 film, Trading Places, which involved a plot device based on insider trading in commodities using government crop reports.
In a parallel criminal proceeding, Van Dyke was also charged with three counts of commodities fraud, wire fraud, unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of non-public government information, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
In the complaint, the CFTC is seeking restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties, trading and registration bans, along with a permanent injunction.
None of the allegations have been proven.