US Special Forces Soldier Arrested For Polymarket Bets On Maduro Raid (wired.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the US Army's special forces, for allegedly using "classified, nonpublic" information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to notch more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket trades. A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Van Dyke is the first person to be charged with insider trading on a prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have been voicing concerns for months about the high likelihood that politicians and public servants could use nonpublic information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have exploded in popularity over the past year. The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations. [...] After Van Dyke's arrest was made public, Polymarket posted a statement to social media noting that it had "identified a user trading on classified government information" and "referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation." The company declined to comment further.
According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and assigned to the Army's Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations. [...] The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro's arrest and that he was aware that he wasn't authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information "by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise." The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account "displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query" outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including "operational details that are not available to the public." [...] Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.
According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and assigned to the Army's Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations. [...] The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro's arrest and that he was aware that he wasn't authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information "by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise." The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account "displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query" outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including "operational details that are not available to the public." [...] Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.
Guilty of not being rich already (Score:5, Insightful)
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Congress has been insider trading for decades...
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Interestingly, the last restrictions against insider trading by Congress were passed (bipartisan) under Obama. The issue is again being raised. Possibly due to recent incidents.
It appears that, while slow, the system does work.
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Congress (as a whole) acts as if their shit doesn't stink. It's high time they get reminded that it most certainly does.
Re:Guilty of not being rich already (Score:5, Informative)
Pelosi's investments have returned a 15% CAGR over 37 years while the NASDAQ has returned 12%
Being slightly better than NASDAQ is not an indictment, and when republicans brought this before Congress they could offer no evidence
Beyond that, ALL congress-critters are required to show their investments, you can even see it here: https://www.capitoltrades.com/... [capitoltrades.com]
What the current administration is doing, forcing military spending, while family members take ownership positions in companies that get government contracts [newrepublic.com], is in a completely different league of corruption
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Re:Guilty of not being rich already (Score:4, Insightful)
Guilty of not sharing. He could have bought a million of trumpcoins and the matter would have not been brought to your attention.
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Couldn't even pay for Trump jr's shoelaces.
He'll be hung for making Polymarket look even worse, assuming jr doesn't cut ties with them.
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Ah, $400k. I thought I read 30 mil somewhere, my mistake. Yeah, for 400k can't even buy DonJr. a toothbrush.
Polymarket, Kalshi whitewashing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Polymarket, Kalshi whitewashing (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't see how this is a trade. For example a future contract has something delivered. If I sell you a December steel rebar contract today, I have to deliver that rebar to you in December, and you have to accept the delivery (unless one or both of us offloads the contract to someone else or we liquidate it, but you get the idea). Even cash delivery futures on e.g. a stock market index are more real, as we'd settle for the difference between the price of the future contract trade and the index value on the delivery date (equivalent to trading a basket of index constituent stocks).
These "prediction markets" are just bets. That's all there is to it. There isn't some real product changing hands, it isn't tied to the price of something tradable. It's just betting on some event occurring.
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subjective matter jurisdiction is this an civilian (Score:2)
subjective matter jurisdiction is this an civilian or military court
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It's not illegal when the President's son does it.
Re: Guilty of not being rich already (Score:2)
Rules are for the little people (Score:5, Informative)
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Treason is defined in the Constitution, and I don't think that qualifies. I think malfeasance would be more applicable.
Re:Rules are for the little people (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting:
Section 3 Treason
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
So...
By attacking Iran, and causing all Gulf Oil shipments to stop, then releasing Russia (a known Enemy to America) from sanctions (that were put in place because of Russian military aggression), thereby giving Russia (aka Putin) hundreds of millions of dollars to continue his assault in Ukraine, and our allies in Europe...
is that NOT Treason by the above definition?
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Well, you could argue it. I don't think it really quite fits as well as malfeasance, though.
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then releasing Russia (a known Enemy to America) from sanctions
Russia is not an enemy of America. They are invading Ukraine, and we don't like that.
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via free and fair elections.
People learn by example. And, to date, no good examples of these exist.
BREAKING: Thing Used as Designed (Score:3)
Re:BREAKING: Thing Used as Designed (Score:4, Informative)
What's the point of having a war if someone can't profit from it?
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The president does it weekly and nothing happens. https://oilprice.com/Latest-En... [oilprice.com]
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The president has immunity. And he can (probably) pardon himself. We'll see what happens after his second term.
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Re:BREAKING: Thing Used as Designed (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush didn't make billions for him and his kids along the way though.
Trump in his second presidency elevated things to a level of clownworld previously unimaginable ... it will be very hard for any new US president to not just go "ehh, I'll be a billionaire too" after this if Trump just walks away.
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If I understand the law correctly, he has immunity from criminal offenses for acts he commits during his presidency. I also believe he has immunity from being sued while he is president but I believe he can be sued for acts he committed during the presidency after he is out of office.
Presidential pardons only work at the federal level. States may still be able to go after him for civil penalties and his co-conspirators for criminal penalties
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If I understand the law correctly, he has immunity from criminal offenses for acts he commits during his presidency. I also believe he has immunity from being sued while he is president but I believe he can be sued for acts he committed during the presidency after he is out of office.
If I understand SCOTUS correctly, the President has absolute immunity for actions related to core presidential acts, presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial actions - the latter two subject to interpretation by SCOTUS. (we'll see how they rule when it's not Trump and/or a Republican /cynical) For example, as I understand it, he didn't (or wouldn't) have immunity for his activities at the Jan 6th Ellipse rally or for his attempts to get Georgia to "find 11,780 votes"
Did anyone bet on this outcome? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone should have put money on whether the guy who made $400k would be arrested.
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Just the appreciative ACK for the Funny, but another story with much more potential for laughs than it got on Slashdot.
The OP was pretty good, but the early part of the discussion didn't "hook" me enough to follow it farther. So I already suggested using AI for better jokes, but now I'm thinking of using AI to help create (and then take credit for) a productive OP. Fortunately, of course I am immune to the effects. Some kind of recursive immunity of self awareness? Or just my increasing annoyance whenever I
Disallow stock trading / betting for certain level (Score:1)
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Trading on inside information should be illegal. Unfortunately, most members of Congress have large stock portfolios before they enter office. What's your plan? Make them turn it all over to a financial advisor? I'm not clear how that would completely eliminate the issue. A Congressman can still see something in the works that could in general drop the stock market or cause it to rise. For the former, they can just suddenly need some money for personal needs and ask the advisor to sell some stock to raise X
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Trading on inside information should be illegal.
Correction: It is illegal.
Unfortunately, most members of Congress have large stock portfolios before they enter office. What's your plan? Make them turn it all over to a financial advisor?
Well, that seems advisable. Unless you think they're sitting up late at night, making online trades themselves.
A Congressman can still see something in the works that could in general drop the stock market or cause it to rise. For the former, they can just suddenly need some money for personal needs and ask the advisor to sell some stock to raise X. Pretty tough to track. Having a "windfall" and turning money back over to the financial advisor before a rise - also hard to track.
Unfortunately, this is all pretty plausible.
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Trading on insider information is illegal, but it's also hard to spot. I'd think if all the world brokerages got together and examined all trades within a couple of related connections to each Congressman, it would be illuminating. Congressmen may be under scrutiny. Their grandson's wife? Their sister-in-law's son? Probably not so much. Just look at the Trump family connections, new Trump Towers, all his crypto currency, and on and on.
Guess I should have specified blind trust or some such instead of just s
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Re:Disallow stock trading / betting for certain le (Score:4, Informative)
What's your plan? Make them turn it all over to a financial advisor? I'm not clear how that would completely eliminate the issue.
In England senior members of the government must put their stocks into a Blind Trust [wikipedia.org]. While not perfect this goes a long way to avoiding insider trading.
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Oh no, what can be done?
It turns out that people have figured it out. Many politicians are required to put their assets into blind trusts. US presidents, up until uh, recently, used to do some version of this. Publicly traded corporate officers generally own stock in their own employer that they're not allowed to just sell because they "need some money for personal needs." They use prearranged schedules and borrow against the assets if they have to.
Re: Disallow stock trading / betting for certain l (Score:2)
If they were going to be in office for only one term, it might be fine. If they are in office for 40 years, cutting out the ability to manage the family wealth would be an unfair burden on the family. Lots of these people have generational wealth. I'm not sure it would be a bad thing to just put in the restrictions and give them a severe disincentive to run for office. But the offset risk is if relatively poorer candidates are the only ones who choose to run, they can be bought more easily. Also not a good outcome.
You are outlining some of the issues very well, but for some reason you stop short even though the implications are trivial. People shouldn't be in office for forty years. Generational wealth should be capped.
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Disallow most betting altogether, it creates too many perverse incentives.
No derivatives, no prediction markets, no sports betting, no lending stock. Don't need any of it.
Disallow trading / betting for voteing and for war (Score:2)
Disallow trading / betting for voteing and for war!
It's a machine for making corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
And as bad as this is, it's not the worst of it. These prediction markets possess knowledge of these bets and can sell it for a fortune. If five minutes from now I set up an account there and put $10,000 into a bet that the US Navy will fire on Chabahar (it's an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman) within the next 24 hours, how much do you think the IRGC will pay to be instantly notified of that, before it goes live on their site? And do you think, for even a moment, that the thugs running Kalshi and Polymarket would hesitate to sell it to them? (By the way, this is a fabricated example. I picked it at random.)
TL;DR: this is an ongoing national security disaster, and isolated prosecutions like the one in this case will do little, if anything, to mitigate it.
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I'm pretty sure they won't sell to IRGC, hiring jr only gives them so much protection.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
The entire point of prediction markets is to incentivize insiders. The theory is the same as that for public markets - profits incentivize information disclosure, which is assumed to benefit everyone.
These are designed to incent insider trading. The gap between theory and practice is what we se
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They (Polymarket, Kalshi) are in possession of some very valuable information. There's a buyer ready and willing to purchase it. Provided that they use sufficient opsec and intermediaries and cryptocurrency (aka "fake money for criminals") they should be able to make things very difficult for anyone investigating.
And: they (Polymarket, Kalshi) know who gave them this information, which means that they can set that
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Sounds like a win-win-win-win for everyone but the fall guy of course. I'm surprised Guy Ritchie hasn't made this movie yet.
90% of The activity is sports betting (Score:1)
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It's crazy. This is what our fintech geniuses come up with. Speculation, collusion, other criminal activities are now the basis of a bunch of platforms. It's ok, they're policed by their own machine learning algorithms!
"The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations."
The DOJ met with Polymarket to protect Trump + cronies. Don Jr. is on the board of directors and is a major investor. The board room already had bowls of coca
Lucky guy! (Score:2)
Guess who's getting a pardon in 3.....2....1...
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Guess who's getting a pardon in 3.....2....1...
He's not rich enough to get a pardon.
Re: Lucky guy! (Score:3)
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And the Jan 6th dolts were?
Money helps, but being an ass seems to be the key way to get a pardon these days.
huge win for sports betting! (Score:2)
IANAL but if he is found guilty there will be some legal precedent to say that prediction markets are in fact securities exchanges and not gambling. I think they could have just tried him for wire fraud if they didn't want to make this precedent.
At least... (Score:1)
But it's ok of congress does this? (Score:2)
Why you never bet on yourself. (Score:2)
I mean sure there are laws for many sports on this but its just a bad idea all around. Its bad for your physiology, for one. Win and you might start believing you can't lose. Lose and you have validation in how much money you lost. Not to mention you might go above and beyond risking your body or life to get that payday.
For me its more superstition that this seriously be a death flag.
silly billy should have made a few more millions (Score:4, Interesting)
Evil is the big winner (Score:2)
These markets are only serving to make evil activities far more profitable than they ever were before.
Corruption starts at the top (Score:1)
Y'all know the DJT Jr., is an advisor to Polymarket AND Kalshi, right?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/0... [nytimes.com]
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call him to the stand
On the nose (Score:2)
Soldiers being INSIDE a palace of a dictator and betting about it, must be the the most insider knowledge ever.
Dude earned it (Score:1)
Jared invested in Polymarket so... (Score:2)