A judge has stayed the CFTC’s civil case against a trooper who allegedly used nonpublic information to make polymarket bets, but the regulator is trying to weigh in on the criminal case.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a soldier who made more than $400,000 using non-public information to trade event contracts on the prediction market platform Polymarket, is pushing back against efforts by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to prosecute him criminally.
In a filing Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Van Dyke’s lawyers opposed the CFTC’s efforts to file an amicus brief related to the claims in his lawsuit. The letter noted the commodity regulator’s counsel has filed a notice from the court to provide its opinion on several of Van Dyke’s defense claims, including that event contracts on platforms like Polymarket were not “swaps” under the CFTC’s purview.
“The CFTC is not the court’s ‘friend’ sheep here,” the defense attorneys said. “It is a regulatory wolf, its own case against Mr. Van Dyke that it refuses to pursue itself. Rather, like a true stalker, the CTFC seeks to advance its own interests through the back door of an amicus brief rather than face its own case against Mr. Van Dyke. This court should not face the CFTC’s galitigation.”
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