Soldier won $410K in Polymarket bets on timing of Maduro capture, US alleges
- Thread starter JournalBot
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….so you’ll be refunding everyone who lost money on your stupid meme coins, right?
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
Short answer is it isn't. It would have been nice if the article put "insider trading" in quotes. I get they were using it illustratively but there is no prediction market specific insider trading laws. He was charged with illegally using/disclosing classified material.
Misuse of classified materials is illegal even outside of prediction market. More than one person has disclosed classified materials in order to win arguments on warthunder (a video game). That is just as illegal although dumber.
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More on topic, anyone who bets on unregulated markets like this that are obviously vulnerable to insider trading is an idiot and deserves all the losses they're hopefully getting.
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Polymarket user magamyman made $515k betting on the initial US strike on Iran, 71 minutes before it happened:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...ly-pockets-500k-before-news-broke/ar-AA1ZTSB7
And in the commodities markets:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/gover...urprises-warrant-scrutiny-experts-2026-03-29/
EDIT to not place blame on commenter
Anyway, if there's money to be made, someone will try to make it. Especially easy money like this requiring practically zero effort.
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Prediction markets are some Black Mirror level of dystopian garbage. Humanity is truly fucked, everything only ever gets worse.
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It seems to me that in addition to the insider trading/fraud financial aspects of this story, there's also a classified information/national security issue. . .
If people notice that that a specific account is making very specific bets about military action, and they notice that account usually wins those bets, then looking at the bets that account makes might tell you advance information about secret military operations. . .
If people notice that that a specific account is making very specific bets about military action, and they notice that account usually wins those bets, then looking at the bets that account makes might tell you advance information about secret military operations. . .
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Wasting a large proportion of the nation's resources on financial engineering (aka glorified gambling) is a big part of the reason why the US is falling behind China in the real world.
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ALSO: Traders on these markets are starting to try to corrupt real world things like journalism and government officials.
I came across this story a few weeks back, about gamblers on Polymarket trying to threaten/bribe an Israeli journalist to change their reporting so that they could win their bets.
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I think explaining away responses to the conduct that caused the Great Depression are more than "social needs." They are economic needs, too.
Need 1 is that these bets reveal plans. The size and timing indicates inside information; interested parties could watch the markets for indicators that, for example, they are going to be attacked, and respond accordingly. That endangers actions and people.
Need 2 is that the people involved have huge financial incentives to ensure particular outcomes. In this case he bet on success, but it doesn't have to go that way. In sports betting, there are numerous examples of people throwing games because of those financial incentives. If it's not just a game but people's actual lives and livelihoods riding on the outcome, then gambling significantly decreases the chance of the best outcome.
Laws don't stop crime. We have laws against murder and theft, and they have failed to stop murders and thefts from occurring. But no one is stupid enough to claim that means we should get rid of those laws.
Laws shift the risk profile against a given activity. They therefore reduce the desirability of engaging in that activity, and reduce the frequency. They make examples of violators to discourage future violations. They take violators out of the system (i.e., imprison them) to prevent repeats.
Arguing that our inability to achieve 100% of anything means that we should take no action is a sure way to achieve nothing in your life, and the sooner you set aside that way of looking at the world, the better off you will be.
Casinos have a lot of issues, and certainly contribute to destroying the lives of gambling addicts, but they don't provide incentives to screw up other things. Winning or losing a poker hand doesn't get soldiers killed, it doesn't damage the economy. So, yes, a prediction market is gambling, but it also does additional harm.
Crypto, of course, also does tons of additional harm, and should be evaluated in the same light.
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What are the odds that other senior administration officials were on the opposite side of this wager?
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Not every use of words needs to be legally precise. It's trading on a prediction market based on information that is secret, i.e., inside information. The underlying principle here is the same as insider trading. Whether it meets the legal definition is of questionable relevance.
That said, if you actually read the CFTC filing:
B. Section 4c(a)(3)-(4) of the Commodity Exchange Act
17. The Act also seeks to deter and prevent the misuse of nonpublic government information to trade in commodities and derivatives markets for personal gain. Toward that end, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 expanded the Act’s prohibitions on insider trading to apply not only to the misuse of information by CFTC personnel, self-regulatory organizations, and exchanges, but also to the misuse of nonpublic government information by any person. In seeking and implementing those amendments, codified in Section 4c(a)(3)-(4) of the Act, Congress affirmed its intent to ban government employees and agents from insider trading using nonpublic government information, and all persons from insider trading using nonpublic information misappropriated from a government source.
It may actually meet the legal definition, too.
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Yes, in a corrupt regime, the primary lesson about breaking the law to profit is to remember to kick back the required 50% up the chain, Gotta pay your insurance premiums.
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1789 Capital Invested in Polymarket. He's not an employee, he's a partial owner.
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As others have pointed out this isn't technically insider trading because he's not trading regulated securities. However, I just want to add that insider trading doesn't require you to have information about something that's guaranteed to happen. It just requires you to use information that's not publicly available. If your company is about to be bought at a significant premium and you find out about it before it's publicly announced, you can't buy a bunch of stock. Even if the deal falls through, you'd still be guilty of insider trading.
As for the boxing part, I think gambling on one's own matches is prohibited in any sport by the regulating body. It could also be illegal, but that will depend on the laws of the venue and athletes.
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Hey now, there's nothing more noble than winning an argument on the internet. Why would we spend so much time on it if it were not so?
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That's what surprised me. How is the DOJ charging and active duty military member with anything? Isn't he subject to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) first? After his court martial and sentencing to a military prison/work camp, THEN the DOJ can have him.
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I don't think this is right. He was charged with commodities fraud and sued by the CFTC, which is exactly how you'd expect an insider trading case to be charged. US insider trading law isn't really based on fairness, it's based on theft. That's why the charges take care to point out that he had "a duty of trust and confidence to maintain the confidentiality" of the info. You're allowed to trade commodities based on your own information (and we've decided to regulate these things as commodities futures for some reason). It would be absurd if an oil refinery wasn't allowed to buy oil futures based because they knew how much oil they planned to process next month, but it's not ok for the refinery's employees to use their employer's private plans to front-run them because they're under an NDA.
So yes he's in trouble for revealing classified info, which is a crime by itself, but he was also charged with insider trading because that information belonged to the government and he had a duty not to reveal it by trading. There's no charge called "insider trading," it's considered a subtype of commodities or securities fraud.
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I wonder if he might be charged both by DoJ and Court Martial?
DoJ might be charging the civilian crimes he's alleged to have committed while DoD might prosecute violations of UCMJ? The same underlying facts might violate both military and civiilian law?
I've seen stories before of soldiers prosecuted under civilian law for crimes that were fundamentally civilian in nature, even though they happened to be members of the military. In this case, the alleged acts seem like they could violate both sets of laws?
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no, i admit i haven't been paying attention. this is the first article that has really brought this issue to my attention.
most of my exposure to prediction markets is as a side data point to political polling. not stuff like this.
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Somewhere in China a spy is sitting at his desk, wondering why he spent long nights day after day for 30 years learning how to predict US military operations and decisions, when now you just need to look for suspicious bets on a public betting market.
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What's the problem? By betting on the successful result of an operation you're part of, it incentivize you to perform better. Outcome alignment!
/sarcasm
/sarcasm
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Being in the military doesn't grant you immunity to prosecution in the courts.
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Being in the military doesn't grant you immunity to prosecution in the courts.
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The current prediction markets allow betting on almost anything and so create a huge surface area for manipulation. That manipulation is concerning as, to use the Israeli journalist story mentioned by an earlier commentator as an example, it encourages threats or violence against others to swing the bet.
Say I had a friend in the Israeli army, I might pay him to fire a shell into Lebanon, after claiming to come under sniper fire, while setting up a bet “Isreal to strike Lebanon on day X.” $50,000 for him, $200,000 for me. Shame about the people whose house he hit.
Traditional betting markets could have the same problem and prediction markets could be run more responsibly, so it’s not the prediction market concept that’s the problem: it’s the implementation.
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Buying a stock is a absolutely not the same thing as gambling on a prediction market.
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Maybe for you.
I plan to retire on my shares in "news anchor parts their hair to the left."
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The issue isn't that there isn't a law to cover that crime. It's that it incentivizes committing that crime.
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John Oliver covered prediction markets on his show this week:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN4njIQcSR4
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN4njIQcSR4
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Polymarket came back to the US in late 2025 (guess why).
In theory his "bet" is closer to what Polymarket and Kalshi claim they are for. He made a "bet" on whether his life could be at risk, kind of like shorting the market.
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And if you really want to get funky, do some light hacking to tie the prediction market IDs to real people. Figure out who the insiders are so when you see them bet, you've got gold-plated intel.
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And he did it with +/- 2 years left before getting his 20. Looks like he got nabbed by the DOJ and not military police, but I'd expect he'll be drummed out of the Army prior to getting any retirement benefits. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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Haven't we (as humans) been through this whole game a few times already?
Like remembering back to history classes, I thought that when insurance as a financial tool was first introduced, people quickly turned it into a gambling thing. Doing things like taking out insurance policies on the outcome of sports, or on when other people would die. Which quickly turned into society destroying rot as people tried to increase the odds of their insurance bet winning. Resulting in insurance becoming regulated to prevent its use as a gambling loophole.
Like remembering back to history classes, I thought that when insurance as a financial tool was first introduced, people quickly turned it into a gambling thing. Doing things like taking out insurance policies on the outcome of sports, or on when other people would die. Which quickly turned into society destroying rot as people tried to increase the odds of their insurance bet winning. Resulting in insurance becoming regulated to prevent its use as a gambling loophole.
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