US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid
cnn.com
cnn.com
Count 1 - Unlawful Use of Confidential Government Information for Personal Gain
Count 2 - Theft of Nonpublic Government Information
Count 3 - Commodities Fraud
Count 4 - Wire Fraud
Count 5 - Engaging in a Monetary Transaction in Property Derived from Specified Unlawful Activity
For a moment there I read this as the unlawful activity was Maduro's arrest, and someone made money on that fact.
Who? Because if you have evidence of military secrets being leaked through prediction markets, we actually need that journalistic record maintained.
Is it helping sick citizens? No. Is it feeding the hungry? No. Free education, housing the un housed or protecting the environment? No, no , no.
To be perfectly clear, it’s not giving vets the benefits they deserve or keeping soldiers safe either.
Money. The priority is money.
Getting it. And making sure those that don’t have it don’t get it.
Count 1, 4, and 5 are the crime of committing a crime. Crime 1 is commiting a crime for personal reasons. 4 is commiting a crime over the wire. 5 is commiting a crime using money.
The only real crime is Count 2: Theft of info.
Damon Jones didn't work for the NBA and basically just told some people the status of an injury to LeBron because he hangs out with him (in exchange for money). His crime I guess is gambling illegally? But wire fraud (I think they even say "creating a fraudulent market") was thrown in there.
Seemed inevitable they were going to start charging prediction market insiders the same way.
I almost always see this charge. Seems too strong as law
This is true, just like "all lives matter" is true, and it misses the point in the exact same way.
Those people you are replying to are not saying that this soldier should get away with his corruption because more powerful people are getting away with theirs. They are saying that those who abuse greater power are doing greater harm, and that their corruption should be punished with greater urgency.
On top of the harm the powerful people inflict directly through their corrupt actions, there's a secondary effect on the society at large. Unlike trickle-down economics, trickle-down corruption is a real thing. People see those in power get away with corruption and say "Why should I do the right thing?"
Of course, the usual answer from those in power ends up being "because we have the power to punish you and you don't have the power to punish us". And that's how you end up with the arrest and prosecution of a US soldier on the same 5 counts that the top politicians and their cronies are getting away with on a daily basis, aided by the president himself.
Inequality codified into the law, literal separate rules, is worse still.
> prosecutors said Van Dyke bet more than $33,000 on Polymarket between December 27, 2025, and January 2, 2026, that Maduro would soon be out of office and that U.S. forces would soon enter Venezuela
Maduro was taken on January 3.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-soldier-charged-...
But also don’t forget that this guy’s trades are a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the likely insider trading that’s visible in the Polymarket logs. (Eg on timing of Iran attacks, Trump tariff announcements, etc)
It's a short step from the Congress people taking advantage of foreknowledge, vs them MAKING self advantageous opportunities. And it's not guaranteed their "making" is in the public interest.
This soldier deserves his punishment. I just wish they would enforce these laws on our congressmen.
In all decent democracies elected politicians have immunity or similar safeguards, since the separation of powers (as theorized by Montesquieu in the middle of illuminism) which represents the foundation of democracy demands that both the legislative and executive power be separated from the judicial one.
“Making the politicians pay for their crimes” is often just a populist argument, while there are ways to incriminate them, expecting that they can be prosecuted like us normal citizens is not compatible with democracy.
You may not like what I said but I said it. Go read the original works by Montesquieu, he understood it first.
On the flip side: who if not me and my precision guided munitions, will protect America (and freedom) from the clear and present danger of 8 year old iranian girls.
And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if an insider in the prosecutor's office bet on that contract.
And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if a special prosecutor will prosecute the other prosecutor.
And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if an insider in the special prosecutor's office bet on the other contract.
(additional derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god).
if rules dont apply universally, then screw these rules altogether
I think the worse aspect is if the news of an attack being leaked to the defender and you are being blown to bits as their ballistic missiles are not decimated in their preemptive strike.
Those people should quit. Sour grapes isn’t an excuse for putting others’ lives at risk.
Why? The enlisted military has never had any issue with similar double standards in the past. George 'AWOL' Bush handily swept the military vote, as did Donald 'Bone Spurs' Trump.
Likewise, veterans routinely and overwhelmingly vote for people who cut veteran support and benefits, over people who don't.
If they think those people are fit to lead them, who are we to tell them they aren't?
[0] https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acs-5...
They are just ordinary gambling unless you allow insider trading and manipulation, because that’s the only way the market can acquire and represent novel useful information.
But if you allow those things, you run into a host of well-documented problems which are the reason why those things are forbidden in other markets.
As it stands, prediction markets seem like a tech-aligned rebranding of age-old rigged gambling products.
Representing only public information without agenda is useful in itself. Words are cheap, and which words you get to see and which words you don't get to see is according to some non-truth incentive. Prediction markets say "you get to make money if you know what the truth actually is". Media says "you get to make money if you entertain people".
It's unfortunate there's also significant negative side effects to financialized prediction markets. I'm more favorable to non-financial prediction markets like Manifold, which say "you get to have social status if you know what the truth is". Seems as though that's the right balance, although you could see how such non-financial prediction markets can be more easily defeated by dedicated non-truth actors if it became prominent in the public conversation.
I think this is visible in sports betting markets. Unless all games are rigged, games outcomes are fairly random events, and betting markets are pretty good at assessing the probabilities of a team winning. Same thing happens in finance. Option markets are really good at assessing the probabilities of asset movements.
The thing though is that these markets are only good in predicting recurring events like game results or financial asset movements. They are good _overall_, as in, if you take 100,000 sport games, the bettings odds are going to be overall in line with what actually happens.
Hence some people deduced that crowds with skin in the game were wise in predicting random stuff. And what happened then is that some of them thought this kind of predictive power could apply to any kind of event, and then predictive markets were created, with the idea that crowds could magically come up with odds for anything, and that would be fairly correct. But what works for recurring events don't hold for single events like Maduro's capture or the end of the Iran war. So the odds in these market is only the result of influence and insider information.
The result is that the odds are generally completely off, unless there is insider information. That's kind of what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. The bets there were on loans defaulting. These events are rare enough that it's impossible to assess their probability easily. And so banks relied on rating agencies (influence), to price the odds of these events happening. Rating agencies were wrong on a lot of these bets, meaning all the bets were placed at very very wrong prices, resulting in the crisis we saw.
The weird outcome of it all, is that those prediction markets have become insider information detectors. That's how they caught the guy. Whoever is winning big on these markets is necessarily cheating.
But I guess the main takeaway for me is that society is in such a state that a lot of people actually bet big on these things. Probably a combination of being fed dreams of fortune since childhood and the american dream not delivering. It's all very sad.
It’s not that different from the general concept of pricing. People will swear they want to buy American, support small business etc. but when it’s time for new jeans they go to Walmart and buy the pair on sale.
Or its a highly lucrative method for people to profit off of insider trading.
It sure as hell isnt fair. It's just dressed up to seem fair.
There was a big push post-9/11 that depended on exactly this.
It's ordinary gambling, but more in line with poker than with roulette. Theoretically there could be some skill that comes into play in predicting it, but there is also a large element of luck. This is just an entertainment product.
If he'd stuck to $500 - $1000 bets, he could have stayed under the radar. And, over the period of his career, earned well north of $400k.
Someone more cynical can say that this is about protecting Thiel’s investment(if people think it’s rigged may stop playing) or making sure that only big G makes money with classified information.
unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
Insider trading and outcome manipulation seems to be the norm on unregulated markets anyway. Whats the crime?
If you rob 100.000, you will have a problem with the police and will be arrested. If you rob 1 billion, the police will have a problem if they try to arrest you.
When the history of this administration is written, provided that history itself has not been completely rewritten a la "1984," Goodfellas will be required reading/watching.
And the highly profitable daily mood-induced oil price bets will just be forgotten.
Wilhoit's Law:
Wilhoit's law.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Politics aside, he isn't a "little guy". He apparently holds the rank of master sergeant. That's a senior battalion-level role and somewhat political.
This isn't some random E-4 getting dragged.
Yes, there are some hard working NCOs and junior Os out there that make shit happen, but they are not the decision makers and make for great fall guys when shit hits the fan.
Not that it’s defensible behavior.
His salary this year was probably about $118k on standard pay scales. I’m not sure what your definition of little guy is, but to me that qualifies
(Not trying to be condescending to anybody here, that’s not far off my salary and I’d definitely call myself the little guy)
This is absolutely a low level soldier getting dragged.
Yesterday, people could justifiably say that betting on polymarket had essentially no consequences.
Today, we learned there can be consequences.
If in a year’s time this is the only person to ever be charged, that’s a different story.
He also made it all very obvious and traceable for them through the email addresses he used. From the report it doesn’t appear that he made any effort to conceal his identity or hide his tracks until afterward, by which time it was too late.
He wasn't a "little guy" but apparently his only mistake was not being high enough.
This isn't joe schlub making side bets here. This is a senior late-career enlisted in an extremely sensitive position violating all of their trust and authority to cash out big.
Watch: Wilholt's essay consists of exactly and only one indefensible, rhetorical sleight of hand. Consequently, no one can honestly defend it. Attempts to do so are undeserving of serious scrutiny.
After tearing down a strawman, he claims high ground:
> The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
But you'll get a fair bit of support for Wilholt's so-called anti-conservative principle from a fair number of prominent conservative thinkers.
False, conspiratorial, dogmatic, juvenile.
The arrest and indictment of someone for betting on Polymarket - which has not yet been tested in court - is going to give huge attention and precedence to the likely illegal activities of some of Polymarket shenanigans coming out of the white house.
Edit: if this was political, it would be pushed in the other direction. This is the NY DOJ doing their jobs.
I don't think this is going to be Hacker News fascinating discourse, but the current USA administration is so openly, brazenly, continuously, gleefully corrupt; continuously fire people with ethics and competence and bring in the in-group of equally corrupt ; and have continuously been rewarded for that behaviour; that I feel the OP is merely observationally factual.
Then clear the docket because you're going to need a lot of investigators to even begin on the Trump administration.
Here's a recent article from the American Bar Association on the rampant and on-going f*ckery.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-righ...
I often think about how much we can trust history 20-30 years from now. It is hard to trust history from hundreds of years ago, either because it was written by victors or because there just isn't enough material in the first place. I suppose we have the opposite problem now (and in the future) - too much noise and junk, whole bunch of it generated by AI slop - where does one even start?
Are people allowed to be self-made anymore?
For me personally, after years of planning and hard work, I once managed to secure myself about $40k of passive income from a blockchain in crypto; this lasted a few years but eventually the founders suspiciously abandoned the entire tech stack (for no reason) and switched to Ethereum; this destroyed the opportunity for me; literally lost that stream entirely. Now, recently, I was able to re-establish a passive income stream of about $10k per year from a non-crypto source; this is from an opportunity I took over 10 years ago... I'm worried about that being taken away somehow.
He should have just cashed out and donated 20% of it to Mar-a-Lago saying exactly what he did and a thank you. It's a little too low for a club membership but since the President's family is a shareholder of Polymarket I think it would have been seen as attracting liquidity
AG would have been instructed to stamp out the investigation, no charges would have been filed
However I am convinced that forcing people to keep their shares for even just one week would stabilize the markets enough to make insider trading much more obvious (and easier to prosecute). It would also force a shift on perspectives more on the long run, instead of focusing on immediate speculation.
This was a prediction market, not a proper market trade, and I am glad I live in a country where that is outlawed. This is untaxed, unregulated gambling.
If small potatoes are getting sued while the sharks swim freely. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the moral.
It goes from "taking out a hit" to "betting that someone will live to next Thursday". It's such an obvious outcome of these systems that I was operating on the assumption that it was the actual point.
So maybe the thing this guy did wrong was to be so face-palmingly pants-on-head obvious about it that they had to shut it down?
"Want something to happen? Bet a lot of money that it won't" goes both ways. "Want to make money and have power over missile systems? Bet, and then make something happen."
This is why welfare systems exist. Because otherwise the system will push people to crime, especially so in our current implementation of Capitalism where it is possible to become unemployed/unemployable through no fault of one's own.
He could have died and this would be a non-story, just someone throwing 32k away before they were killed in action.
People are focusing on the use of confidential information and calling this insider trading, which is fair, he had knowledge that the trading public did not. But to lump him in with refs who call games wrong on purpose is ridiculous. In one example you are betting on something you want to happen anyway, it is not deception. In the other, you are profiting from deliberate fraud. I think there needs to be some sort of category difference between these two.
Firstly, the dichotomy you presented for the individual is: succeed, live, and make loads of money vs fail, die, and lose a fair chunk. The argument you make with this dichotomy is that the gambling doesn't affect anything. However the reality is that there are many ways for the mission to end - fail, live, lose a fair chunk being notable because when the mission is going sideways the individual becomes incentivised to put themselves and others at greater risk to make a successful outcome more likely. Succeed, live, lose your squad mates, make loads of money becomes more likely as well as fail, live, lose your squad mates.
Secondly, insider trading is and always will be a signal for others. If you're only allowed to bet in one direction it becomes a form of information leak - monitor who is liquidating their assets to gamble on outcomes. For any project it becomes a signal to others - if your boss isn't remortgaging to gamble more then you know its time to jump ship. This will in turn have significant effects on outcomes.
Pelosi has made many suspicious trades: https://insider-trading.org/the-nancy-pelosi-insider-trading...
Suspicious trades before Trump's Iran announcements: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge0grppe3po
Yeah right.
Morally it's ok to steal crypto from these types of markets, everybody is crooked there, client and market makers.
Then ENFORCE EXISTING LAWS. That solves good part of it.
Talking about any other solutions will have to wait for govt that's not crooked. It doesn't need revolution, it needs to not have criminals at helm
I’d argue that the level of corruption we’re seeing, not just in the USA but all over the Western world, hasn’t risen to a level that warrants revolutionary action.
> nobody seems to care
And it would seem that the masses tend to agree.
We are much much better off tolerating this level of corruption than we would be attempting a revolution.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how fat the fat cats are so long as the general population’s standard of living doesn't go backwards too far too fast.
Very few people feel impacted by that. If you consider bombing Iran was going to happen anyway because distractions are needed, the money made by the whale that consistently predicts the movements of the current administration is a relatively small thing compared to starting a war for no good reason.
One possible solution is to make all trades public and traceable to the person who made the decision and the people who benefit from that.
Ignoring the moral argument, it isn’t all that clear to me that this would actually be a crime for a legislator under US securities law. It may be that new laws would be required to be able to punish legislators for this kind of behaviour.
The main difference between the two is that betting on the date of a classified op indirectly reveals classified data that can tip off an adversary and cost lives.
"Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" [1]
[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_licet_Iovi,_non_licet_bov...
That's not to say the behavior isn't extremely slimey but they are acting within the law. Your comment doesn't mention the executive branch and the various crypto "ventures" going on, like the Whitehouse dinner for investors of $TRUMP coin of which we have no idea who invested or what they got from it.
No one likes insider trading especially when it's done by politicians, but let's not pretend they're the same
This is how a caste system works. People is not judged based on their actions but their relationship to power.
Senate and congress are both elected. Their re-election is effectively jury nullification.
The people do not care about the crimes.
When the people feel everyone is corrupt without any evidence then the next step is getting actual corrupt leaders like Trump's government and soldiers like this that feel corruption is standard behavior
Who is the "we" in this sentence?
Yes, insider knowledge makes the prediction market more accurate (albeit at the cost of being less "fair"). However US government doesn't want prediction markets to accurately predict the timing of their secret military operations. Hence the arrest.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
Although, it would be amusing to create a sports league where the athletes are expressly permitted to wager on the outcome of their games.
It's not so much insider knowledge that's a problem, but insider influence. You're paying people to make bad decisions.
Politicians are making winning bets too, at several orders of magnitude larger - https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/16/congress-beat...
"The Rich Don't Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883033
Also I would argue that the claim this endangered lives is exaggerated and is clearly more about making examples than true impact.
USA is a rogue state at this point. NATO is at risk because of that.
Maduro was president of a sovereign country. A bunch of kidnappers and murderers invaded the building he was in in Caracas, murdered everyone in the room, then kidnapped him and his wife.
What's the "mission"? To pop up in some room and slaughter everyone in it, then kidnap his wife and him? In order to help steal the resources, billions of dollars in oil, for already wealthy people?
Same thing happening in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria. Israel with US help slaughtering people to steal their land and resources.
There's no mission except theft and murder. There's no corruption because the entire enterprise is rotten to begin with.
It's funny how we accept the importance given to that statement. when he's just some dude who took control of a country and gave himself that title. As if the social construction means anything in this situation.
Since 2013, Venezuela has been suffering a socioeconomic crisis under Maduro. He stole the last two elections and remained in power even though he had not legitimately won.
Numerous international bodies and human rights organizations have found that Nicolás Maduro and his government committed extensive human rights violations. These violations have been ongoing since at least 2014 as part of a systematic plan to repress dissent. State security forces and allied armed groups (colectivos) have been implicated in thousands of unlawful or politically motivated killings and arbitrary arrests of protesters, opposition leaders, and perceived critics.
Immediately after the latest presidential election, at least 24 people died as a result of the government’s repression of protests against the appointment of Nicolás Maduro. Most of these killings could amount to extrajudicial executions. Two of the victims were children.
Basically Madura and his regime, along with Gaza, West Bank and others are the victims because they're less powerful and therefore above reproach? However US and Israel are currently powerful and therefore they are the only ones worthy of criticism and scorn?
Gaza, for instance, is famously anti kidnapping.
If the entire enterprise is rotten, it's because it is corrupted. Unless you're an anarchist you have to accept that a democratic nation state is a legitimate enterprise that is corruptable. I don't think you can say some sub level enterprise X layers down isn't corrupt because the levels above are corrupting that legitimate core.
Primarily - the issue at hand is the legality of 'insider information' with in institutions.
But the bigger issue is how shameful it is that people can't see the absolute horror beyond their little local ideologies or political beliefs.
Maduro is one of the worst tyrants in the world, responsible for murder and imprisonment of any number of innocents and political dissidents, and the direct cause of millions of people displaced.
Venezuela is truly a horrible place, the country has fallen apart, Chavizmo has no popular legitimacy, he lost the election and remained in power.
It's impossible to speak of 'sovereignty' in that context.
What happened to Maduro was a 'net positive' - it was in fact, a crude form of 'net justice'.
It has nothing to do with Gaze, Syria, Iran etc..
And it has little to do with the cronyism of the Trump regime.
It's fair to question legality of actions, but the fact that people could see Maduro is anything but a criminal in the most common sense, is beyond pale. That's the real issue here actually, the inability for people to contextualize complex issues especially in light of basic moral concerns.
The violence against all hose people in Gaza is bad.
Maduro is bad.
Corruption in the White House is bad.
Selective Justice is bad.
Special forces placing bets on Polymarket is bad.
They are different things.
For instance, the moment the Gaza ceasefire allowed Hamas to continue to operate, we all witnessed them dragging their own citizens into the street and summarily executing them for supposed “collaboration.”
But regardless of your opinion of the relative morality of the various parties, the days of the civilized world just sitting around and allowing things like October 7th to happen with no consequences appear to be over.
I'd just suggest maybe get less involved with the internet and as the kids say these days 'go touch some grass'.
Because, frankly, I don't think the average, or even marginal Venezuelan would agree with you at all, as, they have actually had to deal with this dictator.
Today's arrest is proof that Polymarket may have incentivized a key decision maker in this operation to make decisions in a way that would let him profit. This is peak levels of head up ass arrogance.
But it seems to me that the closer to the frontline you go, the betrayal is even worse; if the story is true, then these are his friends and comrades he is endangering for financial gain - its not just an abstract risk argued away by simple high-level corruption.
Now I've learned that he tells the truth through parody. It's really hard, emotionally, to read, but important stuff.
The corruption starts at the head of the snake. We've proven to be just as corrupt as Russia, and Trump's war of choice is going to do more damage to the US than Putin's mistake invading Ukraine.
I wonder when someone figures out vote-buying-as-service
Nobody should be surprised.
Hegseth thinks loyalists + AI as brains can replace decades of actual real-world experience and keeping the highest ethics and morality standards with a bunch of AI-driven baboons with stars on their shoulders.
Paul Krugman wrote a good piece about exactly this. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/cultifying-the-us-militar...
Everyone can already feel the ripples of what he is doing. There is an exodus in excellence in the upper echelons of the us military never seen before.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/22/navy-secreta...
The US is getting less safe by the day. You can also see it on tourism data and forecasts. A lot of people don’t feel safe to travel to the US any longer.
Soccer World Cup in the US and 250th anniversary of the USA would have caused a tourism boom with past administrations. But people rather go to China instead.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/tourist...
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Albeit wrongly attributed. [1]
[1]: https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...
Just as Smedley D. Butler once stated, many many years ago: "War is a racket"
Is that ‘fair’ for everyone? No! Because no everyone has access to the same level of information. But no one forces you to bet either.
1. Apply for a presidential pardon.
2. Get it.
I'll also admit I've never liked gambling (or fraud) so it's really hard for me to understand what is so appealing about something like polymarket or kalshi. (I have the same gaps with regard to casinos, they just seem like hell on earth -- not a positive aspect to them whatsoever) At least from my outsider's perspective it seems clear that these sorts of gambling are not good for society whatsoever.
Yet prediction market fraud is made an enforcement priority, except to say that nobody close to Trump's own cabinet will be prosecuted - the little guys will be made an example of to make it seem like those at the top are taking the moral high-ground. "Every accusation is a confession."
I think we all can guess at the truth here.
Epstein said the same, and yet nobody went out to protest.
Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket...it's just comical
I keep remembering this sketch each time I read about the differences in prosecution in the US between social classes.
From what I gathered:
What's the difference between a good hunter and bad hunter.
A bad hunter shoots anything that moves, a good hunter shoots anything that moves. Perhaps something was lost in translation.
https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-sports/donald-trump-uses-pet...
The canadians have the info. He was special forces. He was enlisted (not an officer). He was involved, or at least privy to, the planning of the Venezuela thing.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11814801/maduro-capture-polymarke...
If this had happened during, say, the Osama bin Laden raid I think it would have been one of those "damaging the American psyche" stories that would have run for months with a giant trial and a lot of public shame. Trump coming onto the scene and his first term broke a lot of people's capacity for caring about those sorts of events.
Now we have an operation the public didn't ask for, initiated by people with no clear moral codes of their own and very unclear objectives, ones that we can largely assume are for their own personal gain as well, and all of that trickling down to blatantly illegal use of confidential data for personal gain by someone the public would typically respect. And I'm sure a subset of people will try to make this into a big story, but with everything else that's gone on recently I think it probably fades after a few days (except for the prosecutors involved of course).
This is why no-one at the top institutions, politicians (Pelosi), presidents (Trump) and everyone else in proximity gets arrested or charged for insider trading in all forms. It doesn't apply to them.
This is a reminder that the rule makers are allowed to grift and break their own rules, but will arrest you for copying them or doing the same thing because this soldier was not part of their club.
He wasn't invited to their private insider group chat. So this solider was arrested and charged instead.
I mean it’s a serious issue and obviously wrong to do.
Obama called this out explicitly after the ruling and his analysis has been more or less accurate.
The suspect didn't trade securities. SEC doesn't have jurisdiction. The curiosity–to me as a layman–is that this is being prosecuted by the DoJ versus under the UCMJ.
Different people and organizations in this world have different goals. More news 10.
End result is you place bets against things you want to happen. eg. USA invading Iran. If you win the bet, you make money. If you lose the bet, you still win because the USA invaded Iran. And maybe that happened because people in power took your bet and influenced the odds in their favor. A fully deniable market for bribes. Same reason you can't bet on unnatural death, because it crowdsources assassination.
Not my downvote btw, corrective upvote now applied.
* Unlawful Use of Confidential Government Information for Personal Gain
* Theft of Nonpublic Government Information
* Commodities Fraud
* Wire Fraud
* Engaging in a Monetary Transaction in Property Derived from Specified Unlawful Activity