U.S. charges Google engineer with insider trading over $1.2M in Polymarket profits

A longtime Google software engineer has been charged in New York with insider trading allegations tied to bets on Polymarket, with federal prosecutors saying he used confidential company information to make more than $1 million in profits. The case centers on Michele Spagnuolo, whom the Justice Department says traded on internal Google Search data to predict outcomes connected to the company’s annual “Year in Search” campaign.

According to TechCrunch, prosecutors allege Spagnuolo risked more than $2.7 million on wagers linked to Google’s 2025 Year in Search marketing campaign, which highlights the most searched topics and people of the year. The complaint says he used confidential, internal search data about the most-searched celebrities to guide those bets, and that he traded under the name “AlphaRaccoon” on Polymarket.

As reported by Bloomberg and Wired, the accusation is that Spagnuolo made his trades using nonpublic information available to him through his role at Google. Wired identified him as a security engineer, while Google’s own research page describes him as a staff information security engineer. The company said the employee accessed marketing material through a tool available to all employees, but that using confidential information to place bets was a serious violation of policy.

The case is notable because it appears to be one of the first insider-trading prosecutions connected to a prediction market in the United States, according to TechCrunch’s account of Polymarket’s statement. Polymarket said it worked closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and called itself the only prediction platform whose cooperation has so far led to insider trading charges in the U.S.

The Justice Department, as quoted by TechCrunch, said Spagnuolo violated the duties he owed to his employer and used Google’s confidential business information to generate more than $1.2 million in trading profits. The charges underscore growing scrutiny of prediction markets, which let users bet on real-world outcomes ranging from politics to internet trends, and raise questions about how companies protect sensitive internal information that could influence those markets.

Google said it had placed the employee on leave and would take appropriate action. The case is likely to draw attention from both the tech industry and regulators because it sits at the intersection of workplace confidentiality, financial markets and the fast-growing prediction-market business.