Google engineer charged with insider trading on Polymarket using search data

Federal prosecutors charged a Google software engineer Wednesday with insider trading after he allegedly used confidential company search data to earn more than $1.2 million betting on the Polymarket prediction platform.

The case marks the first insider trading charges stemming from trades on Polymarket, signaling that federal authorities are extending market integrity enforcement to blockchain-based prediction markets — platforms increasingly popular among tech-industry workers, including those in Southern California.

Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian national who has worked at Google since 2014, allegedly accessed internal marketing material for the company's 2025 "Year in Search" report using a tool available to all employees. He then placed yes/no wagers on Polymarket contracts predicting trending search terms before the data was publicly released Dec. 4, 2025, according to prosecutors.

Trading under the online alias AlphaRaccoon, Spagnuolo placed bets from October through December 2025, adjusting his wagers each time the internal data was updated, the FBI found. Investigators traced cryptocurrency payments from his account to identify him.

Charges against Spagnuolo include violations of the Commodity Exchange Act, wire fraud and money laundering.

Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the prosecution was meant to "reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets," according to a statement Wednesday. "Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted," Clayton said.

Google said in a statement to the Associated Press that "the employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies."

Polymarket said in a statement that blockchain-based trading is "transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints," adding that it "is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States." The company has since updated its rules to prohibit trading on contracts where users possess confidential information. A special forces soldier was separately charged last month with insider trading on Polymarket using classified military information, earning approximately $400,000.

Spagnuolo, who resides in Switzerland, faces charges in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He could not be immediately reached for comment.