Google Engineer Charged Over Alleged Insider Trades on Polymarket
A Google security engineer has been charged in New York with allegedly using confidential company information to trade on the prediction market platform Polymarket.
Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen who worked from Google’s Zurich office, was arrested and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. According to a federal complaint, Spagnuolo placed trades between October and December 2025 based on internal Google data not available to the public.
Prosecutors allege that Spagnuolo earned $1.2 million from a Polymarket wager on who would become Google’s most-searched person of the year in 2025. The complaint says he correctly predicted the result because he had access to confidential internal information. An FBI agent wrote that other traders did not have access to the same data.
Google said the employee accessed marketing material through a tool available to staff, but that using confidential information to place bets would violate company policy. The company said Spagnuolo has been placed on leave while it reviews the matter.
Polymarket said it cooperated with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The company also said the arrest followed a referral it made to authorities. Because Polymarket’s offshore platform uses cryptocurrency, wallet transactions are publicly traceable. Investigators allege Spagnuolo traded under the username AlphaRaccoon, an account that had previously drawn attention from observers.
The case is the latest enforcement action involving prediction markets. In April, a US Army special forces officer was arrested over alleged trades tied to the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. OpenAI also fired an employee earlier this year for alleged insider trading on a prediction platform.
Lawmakers have increased scrutiny of prediction markets. House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer recently opened an investigation into insider trading on such platforms, including how Polymarket verifies users and monitors activity.