On April 24, Eastern Time, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest of active-duty Army Special Forces Staff Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke.

The same day, the Department of Justice released a complaint indicating that Van Dyke participated in an operation on January 3 this year to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from the Presidential Palace in Caracas.

Reports suggest that Van Dyke, on the eve of the operation, placed bets on the prediction markets that Maduro would be captured, earning over $400,000. While the specific account information was not disclosed in the report, based on the mentioned betting direction and profit amount, we have identified the account 0x31a5.

This is the same account pointed out by PolyBeats in two consecutive articles on January 4 and January 7 as one of the five insider accounts.

Van Dyke Account Recap

Let's rewind the timeline to January 4 of this year.

After the arrest of Maduro, PolyBeats immediately dissected on-chain data, identified five accounts, and published a detailed report within less than 24 hours after the operation. For more details, please see "They missed out on $2 million because Maduro wasn't supposed to be home during the New Year."

Among them, Van Dyke's account was the most profitable of the five. The account was registered on December 26, 2025, and subsequently engaged in a series of bets related to "Maduro stepping down" and "U.S. military entering Venezuela," highly correlated with the capture operation, with a total principal of about $30,000 and total profits exceeding $400,000.

On the day of the operation, the account withdrew most of the funds, then transferred them to an overseas cryptocurrency account, and further deposited them into a newly opened brokerage account.

On January 6, three days after the operation, the media began reporting on unusual transactions on Polymarket related to the operation. The same day, the account requested Polymarket for deletion, citing "unable to access the registered email." Simultaneously, the individual replaced the email registered with the cryptocurrency exchange with an anonymous email created secretly as early as December 14.

New Account, Precision Positioning, Same-Day Withdrawal, Post-Incident Evidence Destruction—this set of operations is precisely the abnormal feature we highlighted in our January retrospective.

Today, the Department of Justice gave this address a name: Gannon Ken Van Dyke.

The Story is More Than One Person

Van Dyke's arrest marks the first DOJ prosecution in Polymarket's insider trading history. But this story has never been just about him.

In two articles in January, PolyBeats identified a total of 5 accounts. Apart from Van Dyke, the other 4 currently have no official investigation information:

0xa72db1749e9ac2379d49a3c12708325ed17febd4, Profits $74,982;

0x6baf05d193692bb208d616709e27442c910a94c5, Profits $145,619;

0x168b100d7a6620a2f49a455344c2c006eaf1714b, Profits around $34,000;

0x168b100d7a6620a2f49a455344c2c006eaf1714b, Profits around $54,000.

Why haven't these 4 accounts been caught?

The most direct reason is the amount. Van Dyke's profit is close to $410,000, the highest of the four accounts, making law enforcement priority clear.

More crucially, there is identity. Van Dyke is an active-duty military member, has signed a non-disclosure agreement, and directly participated in operation planning, making the identity verification process extremely short. The true identities and sources of the other 4 accounts are still unclear. If they obtained second-hand information, the legal boundaries will be much more blurred, and the difficulty of prosecution will increase significantly.

Another layer is Polymarket's own reporting threshold. The platform claims they voluntarily discovered and reported Van Dyke to law enforcement, but obviously, the other 4 abnormal accounts were not reported in the same manner. The platform has not provided any explanation for this.

However, one thing is changing the game.

In March of this year, Polymarket released an enhanced version of its market integrity rules, explicitly banning three types of behavior: trading on information subject to confidentiality requirements, trading on others' insider information, and involvement in relevant markets by individuals with the power to influence the outcome. As the rules were put into place, this indictment from the DOJ was also sending the same message to everyone: the platform is willing to cooperate with investigations, the records on the blockchain are immutable, and the investigation itself could last for months.

From the opening of positions to arrest, Van Dyke's journey took nearly four months. For the other four accounts and all those with information asymmetry attempting insider trading in the prediction market, this arrest may just be the beginning.

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