A Google software engineer has been arrested and charged with insider trading after allegedly using confidential company information to place bets on the prediction platform Polymarket.
Michele Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen living in Switzerland, was brought before a federal judge in New York after his arrest on Wednesday.
The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed charges against Spagnuolo, accusing him of breaking insider trading laws through several bets placed on the platform.
Spagnuolo allegedly exploited early access to internal Google information to accumulate $1.2m (£894,330) in winnings through the platform.
A Google spokeswoman confirmed the company was “working with law enforcement on their investigation” and said the employee had been placed on leave.
The spokeswoman said the internal data used was marketing material accessed “using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies.”
A Polymarket spokesman confirmed the platform “worked closely” with authorities during the investigation, adding that “blockchain trading is transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints.”
Blockchain is a form of digital record associated with cryptocurrency, which is the only currency Polymarket accepts for trading on its platform.
The US Attorney’s office collaborated with the FBI on Spagnuolo’s arrest, and he has since been released on a $2.25m bond, according to ABC News.
Spagnuolo allegedly traded under the account name AlphaRaccoon, using cryptocurrency spread across several accounts, but the FBI linked his activity to an account opened with an Italian identification card.
According to online profiles, Spagnuolo worked at Google for more than 12 years as an engineer focused on information security before his arrest.
He began using Polymarket in 2024, and between October and December of that year, he placed $2.7m in bets related to Google, the US Attorney’s office said.
His most lucrative alleged wins involved correctly predicting who would and would not be the most searched person on Google in 2025, according to court papers.
He reportedly placed bets against names including Bianca Censori and President Donald Trump, instead backing singer D4vd at odds the platform had priced near zero.
Court papers stated that when Spagnuolo placed that bet in November, he already knew D4vd had become Google’s most-searched person through data the company had collected before its public release.