The U.S. special forces soldier who allegedly used classified information to bet on the raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is a seasoned real estate investor who lives in North Carolina, according to public records and social media posts.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke is accused of making more than $400,000 after betting roughly $33,000 across 13 trades on Polymarket, a popular prediction market platform, federal authorities said in an indictment. Authorities allege the master sergeant “participated in the planning and execution of the U.S. military operation” to seize Maduro in January.
He has been charged in New York federal court with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
The court docket did not list an attorney for Van Dyke, and he could not be reached Friday. He appeared in federal court in North Carolina on Friday morning, according to court documents, and was released on a $250,000 unsecured bond.
The federal magistrate judge ordered Van Dyke to appear in court Tuesday in New York.
Van Dyke has been an active-duty soldier in the U.S. Army since 2008, according to the unsealed federal indictment, and was most recently stationed at Fort Bragg, a military base near Fayetteville, North Carolina.
He is associated with at least seven properties in the Fayetteville area, according to Cumberland County property records reviewed by NBC News. He described himself on an online real estate forum as an investor and property manager in Fayetteville with 13 years of experience.
“We currently own 6 properties ourselves as of Feb 2023,” Van Dyke wrote. “My wife is also a Realtor and I am currently active duty military.”
Van Dyke’s wife did not immediately respond to an interview request.
He also lists a property — a two-bedroom, one-bath cottage in the North Carolina ski resort town of Beech Mountain — on Airbnb. Van Dyke’s profile says he is originally from California. “I love to travel, and do anything related to outdoors; hiking, backpacking, camping, biking, boating,” he wrote.
State records show he has a business with his wife, Better Homes NC. In March 2025, he registered a limited liability company, Better Homes NC Flips, according to a state filing. Van Dyke is listed as one of two company officials.
He has only minor traffic infractions in California and North Carolina on his criminal record, according to documents reviewed Friday.
Larry Duncan, a commercial truck driver who said he lives next door to Van Dyke in Fayetteville, said that the soldier came across as guarded and appeared to be living alone. Van Dyke’s son was sometimes at the house, Duncan said, adding that his neighbor once alluded to his “son’s mother.”
“I’m a pretty good judge of character. He just seemed standoffish. He seemed different,” said Duncan, who served in the Marines in the 1980s. Van Dyke did not say much about his career, but Duncan made an educated guess: “This dude just looks like he’s in special forces. He just carries himself like that.”
In a statement announcing the indictment, the Justice Department alleged that Van Dyke sent most of his proceeds to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before depositing them into a newly created online brokerage account.
“The same day of the operation, Van Dyke withdrew the majority of his allegedly unlawful proceeds from his Polymarket account,” the DOJ said. Three days after the Maduro raid, on Jan. 6, Van Dyke “asked Polymarket to delete his Polymarket account, falsely claiming that he had lost access to the email address,” authorities said.
Van Dyke attempted to make an account on Kalshi, a rival prediction market platform, according to a spokesperson for the company. The spokesperson said that Van Dyke failed to pass the platform’s user verification process, called Know Your Customer, or KYC.
In a post on X, Polymarket’s founder and CEO said he was “grateful” to the DOJ for publicly acknowledging the company’s cooperation on the Van Dyke case.
“Noise aside, the reality is we work proactively with all relevant authorities on any suspicious activity on our marketplace. We flagged this, referred it, and cooperated throughout the process. This happens constantly behind the scenes, despite what many are led to believe,” Shayne Coplan said.
