Google Employee Charged with $1.2M Polymarket Insider Trading

Federal prosecutors have charged a Google employee with fraud after alleging he made $1.2 million in profits using insider information to place bets on the prediction market platform Polymarket.

Michele Spagnuolo, a staff information security engineer at Google, was arrested Wednesday morning in New York and charged with money laundering, commodities fraud, and wire fraud.

Spagnuolo used confidential, nonpublic Google Year in Search data to place winning bets on Polymarket contracts. He correctly bet that singer d4vd would be Google most searched person in 2025, profiting approximately $1.2 million.

The CFTC civil complaint detailed that Spagnuolo correctly predicted outcomes on multiple other search markets. Google said it is working with law enforcement and has placed the employee on leave.

This marks the second high-profile insider trading case on Polymarket in just over a month.

Sources:

U.S. Department of Justice - Google Employee Charged With Insider Trading