Summary: Gannon Ken Van Dyke charged with commodities and wire fraud Van Dyke earned $400,000 betting on Maduro's capture Case filed in Southern District of New York federal court Federal authorities on April 23 charged a Special Forces soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with using inside information about the raid to win roughly $400,000 through bets placed on online prediction markets. Prosecutors accused Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an active-duty U.S. Army soldier involved in the planning and execution of the U.S. operation, of using his access to classified information to place a series of wagers on Maduro’s future and whether U.S. forces would enter Venezuela through Polymarket, one of a number of sites offering users the opportunity to place bets on real world events. Hours after U.S. forces descended on a compound in Caracas on Jan. 3 to capture the Venezuelan leader and his wife, Van Dyke anonymously earned a hefty payday, authorities said. Van Dyke, 38, faces charges including commodities fraud, wire fraud, theft, and using confidential government information for personal gain. It was not immediately clear from public court dockets whether he had retained an attorney. The case against Van Dyke is believed to be the first time the Department of Justice has prosecuted an insider trading case based on prediction market betting, an industry that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months and calls for stiffer regulations that would bar users, especially those working in government roles, from trading on sensitive or confidential nonpublic information. “Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain,” said Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Manhattan-based Southern District of New York, where the charges against Van Dyke were filed. In a statement, he added: “Those entrusted to safeguard our nation’s secrets have a duty to protect them and our armed service members, and not to use that information for personal financial gain.” The series of well-timed bets prosecutors say Van Dyke anonymously placed late last year quickly drew attention in the days after the U.S. operation to bring Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face narco-terrorism charges in federal court in Manhattan. Polymarket data showed that in the week leading up the Jan. 3 raid an anonymous trader began placing small bets on a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. According to the indictment, Van Dyke’s first wager came Dec. 27, when he made a $96 bet on contracts that would pay out if U.S. forces were in Venezuela by Jan. 31. Over the following week, the same user steadily increased the stakes, concentrating on a narrow set of contracts tied to Maduro’s fate, including bets that would pay off if he were no longer in power by the end of the month, a scenario most users still viewed as remote. The last wager was placed at 9:58 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 2, just before a U.S. operation deposed the Venezuelan president. When news of the U.S. operation to capture him broke in the early morning hours of Jan. 3, the contracts surged in value. By the end, the trader had turned roughly $34,000 in wagers — more than half placed hours before the operation — into more than $400,000 in profit. Prosecutors said that before cashing out his winnings that same day and as U.S. forces were preparing to transfer Maduro to a U.S. base, Van Dyke posted a photo of himself on a military ship at sea wearing combat fatigues, carrying a rifle, and standing alongside three other service members. Later that day, Van Dyke allegedly transferred most of the proceeds to a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then a newly created online brokerage account before withdrawing the majority of the money. As word of the suspicious trade spread widely online, Van Dyke took steps to conceal his identity as the trader, prosecutors said. He asked Polymarket to delete his account three days after the Maduro raid, claiming he had lost access to the email address with which his account had been associated, according to the indictment. He also changed the email registered to his cryptocurrency exchange account to one not directly registered under his name, prosecutors said. Van Dyke, an 18-year veteran who enlisted in 2008, was detained on April 23 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he will face preliminary court proceedings before being transferred to Manhattan for trial. Most recently stationed at Fort Bragg, he was promoted in 2023 to the rank of master sergeant, the Army’s second-highest enlisted rank, authorities said. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on Van Dyke’s arrest, referring all questions to DOJ officials. “Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security information fully apply.” The case against Van Dyke comes as lawmakers in Washington have increasingly raised alarm about the possibility of government employees using access to inside information to profit through prediction market bets. Last month, the White House warned staff against insider trading amid a string of reports highlighting suspicious trades tied to the ongoing conflict in Iran. Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, announced in October that it planned to start its own prediction market. But asked about Van Dyke’s arrest and concerns about other government insiders illegally cashing in, the president expressed concerns over the boom in event-betting platforms. “The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” he told reporters, adding, “I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually.” Polymarket, in a statement posted to social media, noted that it first publicly identified the suspicious trade, reported it to law enforcement, and cooperated with the DOJ investigation. Jeremy B. Merrill, Tara Copp and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

Summary: Justin Sun alleges World Liberty froze $320 million in WLFI tokens Lawsuit filed in federal court in California World Liberty co-founded by Donald Trump and his sons  Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on April 21 ​sued World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture co-founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and his sons, alleging that World Liberty illegally froze his holdings of tokens issued by the company. Sun alleged in the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California, that World Liberty secretly installed tools to prevent the sale of his tokens after they became tradeable in September 2025. The lawsuit also alleges that World Liberty threatened to "burn" - or permanently delete - his holdings, even while they were in Sun's digital wallet. Sun, the Hong Kong-based founder of the Tron cryptocurrency, bought $45 million of WLFI tokens - some 3 billion - and was later awarded a further 1 billion tokens after being named as an advisor to World Liberty, the lawsuit said. Sun's portfolio of 4 billion WLFI tokens is worth roughly $320 million, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest WLFI price. Zach Witkoff, World Liberty Financial's chief executive and a co-founder, said in a post on X on Wednesday that Sun's legal claims "are entirely meritless, and World Liberty looks forward to getting the case thrown out promptly." "He engaged in misconduct that required World Liberty to take action to protect itself and its users," added Witkoff, who is the son of Steve Witkoff, U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Missions. Eric Trump, a son of the president and also a World Liberty co-founder, also posted to X on Wednesday. He wrote "The only thing more ridiculous than this lawsuit is spending $6 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall," a reference to Sun's November 2024 purchase of a piece of art called "Comedian" by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial ​declined to comment on the lawsuit. A representative of the company had told Reuters earlier this week that Sun "is not an advisor at World Liberty Financial, and he has never held an operational role in the company." The White House did not respond to a request for comment. World Liberty is the most prominent of several lucrative crypto businesses co-founded or controlled by the Trump family, which has already made more than $1 billion from World Liberty, according to a Reuters analysis. World Liberty's bylaws state that 75% of the revenue from WLFI token sales is routed to the Trumps. World Liberty is under increasing scrutiny from some of its investors, who have complained for months about what they describe as the company's lack of ​transparency, centralized governance structure and failure to respond to community complaints, Reuters reported this month. In the lawsuit, Sun described himself as "one of World Liberty's anchor investors." World Liberty's structure means that the WLFI tokens Sun bought in 2024 are not equivalent to standard company shares. The tokens do not carry ownership in the company and holders are not entitled to dividends, although they do gain a limited say in the company's governance. SOURING RELATIONSHIP The lawsuit caps a dramatic deterioration of relations between Sun and World Liberty. In September, Sun claimed the company had frozen his token holdings, and earlier this month alleged in a post on social media platform X that World Liberty had secretly embedded what he described as a "backdoor blacklisting function" in the blockchain-based contracts used for the tokens. That gave World Liberty "unilateral power" to "freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights" of token holders without cause or recourse, Sun wrote on X. World Liberty at that time responded to Sun's allegations with a post on X that said: "We have the contracts. We have the ⁠evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal." The lawsuit said Sun "has long been (and remains) an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family." FROZEN OUT The lawsuit alleges that World Liberty representatives "repeatedly contacted and pressured" Sun to invest additional capital in the venture between April and July 2025, including requests to commit to acquiring $200 million in a separate World Liberty stablecoin token and to acquire an equity stake in the company. Sun said in a post on X on Wednesday he had "tried in good faith" to resolve his complaints with World Liberty, adding its team "refused my requests to unfreeze my tokens and restore my rights as a token holder." A measure proposed by the company last week would restrict early investors holding a combined 17 billion tokens from being able to trade all of their tokens until 2030, a year after the president is scheduled to leave ​office. Sun said he "strongly opposes" the new governance proposal, but could not vote on it as World ​Liberty had frozen his early investor tokens. Sun has also invested heavily in President Trump's so-called meme coin. Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies since returning to the White House in January 2025. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a 2023 lawsuit against Sun for $10 million. The lawsuit had alleged fraud, selling unregistered crypto securities and hiding payments to celebrities to promote his products. Sun made no admission of wrongdoing. (Reporting by Tom Wilson in London, David Gauthier-Villars in Istanbul, Lawrence Delevingne in Boston and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Tom Lasseter, Himani Sarkar, Clarence Fernandez and Catherine Evans)

Summary: U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously for Dana Nessel Enbridge missed 30-day deadline to move Line 5 case Justice Sonia Sotomayor authors opinion limiting equitable tolling A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in her argument that Enbridge Energy waited too long to ask to move a lawsuit about twin pipelines running beneath the Straits of Mackinac to federal court from state court. The decision, announced on April 22 and less than two months after the court heard oral arguments in Washington, may revive a 7-year-old case Nessel brought in Ingham County to effectively block Enbridge from using Line 5, a 645-mile-long oil and natural gas pipeline system that runs from Wisconsin through Michigan and into Canada. It doesn't immediately settle any of the specific legal issues regarding the use of the pipelines, however. In that case, Nessel, who campaigned in 2018 in favor of shutting down the line at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, argued that Enbridge's operation of Line 5 violated state law and declared the 1953 easement granted to the state void, citing the risk of an oil spill and the consequences it could have. Enbridge has argued for decades that the line is safe and protected by an international treaty and has moved to build a new single pipeline that would be encased in a 21-foot-diameter tunnel at the bottom of the Straits. Before any action occurred in Nessel's 2019 case, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in late 2020, issued an order to revoke the 1953 easement granted for the oil and natural gas pipeline as well and filed a lawsuit herself in state court. Enbridge then successfully had Whitmer's case moved to U.S. District Court under federal statute, noting the treaty with Canada involving Line 5 and other issues it said were better suited to be heard in a federal court. Whitmer dropped that case in late 2021, though Enbridge countersued Whitmer in an attempt to block her revocation of the 1953 easement, winning a summary judgment in that effort in a federal court in Michigan in late 2025. (Whitmer has asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to reconsider that decision.) But it was only after Enbridge successfully got that earlier case by Whitmer moved to federal court that the company tried to move Nessel's case to federal court, citing the same reasons. The only problem is that it tried to do so more than two years after it was filed, missing a 30-day deadline. Enbridge argued that a legal concept known as "equitable tolling" applied, allowing for such a delay, effectively equating it to a statute of limitations which had been held in abeyance while the other transfer was decided and noting the international issues involved. "It’s not suffering for a state to have to litigate in federal court," John Bursch, a Grand Rapids lawyer and former Michigan solicitor general who represented Enbridge, said before the Supreme Court during arguments in February. He added that, as far as Enbridge was concerned, Congress didn't intend to "handcuff federal courts" when it came to deciding the best forum for such issues to be considered. But state officials had reason to argue the issue belonged in state court as well. A Michigan judge, for one, might be "better attuned to the state’s interests in environmental protection, recreation and the state’s economy," the American Bar Association said in a preview of the case. Nessel's office argued before the court in February that there was no valid reason for Enbridge to be allowed to blow past the 30-day delay, especially considering the federal statute allowing for removal to federal court didn't specifically grant one. To provide one in this case could open the door to delays for almost any reason, the state said. Arguing before the court in February, Ann Sherman, Nessel's solicitor general, said Congress never intended to give parties so much leeway in transferring cases. "This is not an area where Congress said federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction," she said. "We trust the state court to do it." A unanimous Supreme Court agreed, though it stopped short of deciding whether there were no reasons for delay under the removal statute other than those specifically enacted by Congress. Writing for the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "Enbridge cannot identify any sensible reason why Congress would have adopted so many express, specific equitable exceptions to (removing a civil case from state court to federal court) if equitable tolling was already available for belated removals across the board." "Allowing equitable tolling of (the statute's) deadline would undermine Congress’s manifest interest in resolvingthreshold removal questions early and conclusively," Sotomayor wrote. "Under the rule the court adopts today, plaintiffs that sue in state court usually can be confident that, after (the) deadline has elapsed, the forum question has been put to rest and the case will proceed in the chosen court. Under the rule Enbridge favors, to the contrary, the possibility of a late removal would hang over a case, generating uncertainty and risking significant waste of resources in one forum before a possible belated removal to another." Nessel didn't immediately react to the decision but it was cheered by officials with the Oil & Water Don't Mix Campaign, a coalition of several environmental groups working to close down Line 5 through the Straits. “This is a clear and pivotal win generated by the movement to shut down Line 5," said Sean McBrearty, the campaign's coordinator. “Now, this case will head back to state court, where it belongs. Thanks to Michigan’s attorney general, we are closer than ever to taking down a foreign fossil fuel giant that is putting 84% of North America’s available, fresh surface water at risk each day that Line 5 continues operating." Ryan Duffy, a spokesman for Enbridge, said, the decision aside, Line 5 remains regulated by the federal government, which conducts annual inspections and has identified "no safety issues that would warrant its shutdown." As to the Supreme Court's decision, he said a federal court "already concluded that the governor's efforts to shut down Line 5 were preempted" and that Nessel's state court case "has been stayed by stipulation of the parties pending the outcome of the governor’s appeal" of last year's federal court ruling. "Enbridge is committed to the safe operation of Line 5 and to working constructively with regulators and stakeholders," he added. Some other groups were displeased as well, with the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), an association of small businesses, saying it puts in place a rigid time limit for removal to a federal court that wasn't there before. “Congress never intended for plaintiffs to use procedural gamesmanship and lawsuit manipulation to avoid federal jurisdiction,” said Beth Milito, vice president and executive director of NFIB’s Small Business Legal Center. “At first glance, this case may seem like inconsequential bureaucracy to the average American, but the court’s decision will have a very real impact on small business owners whose cases are appropriate for federal court.” This story was updated with additional information. Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on X @tsspangler.