Google Engineer Charged With Insider Trading on Polymarket!

A Google security engineer, Michele Spagnuolo, was arrested and charged Wednesday with using confidential internal company data to place winning bets on Polymarket's prediction markets. According to a complaint unsealed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Spagnuolo accessed an internal Google tool that tracked trending search queries — then used that nonpublic data to bet on which individuals would top Google's most-searched lists for 2025.

Spagnuolo allegedly transferred $3.8 million in USDC to a Polymarket address under the username "AlphaRaccoon," ultimately profiting more than $1.2 million. After winning, he moved 5 million USDC.e out of Polymarket, routing funds through a swapping service and a privacy tool before landing in an Italian payment account opened with his own government ID — a paper trail that proved fatal to his concealment effort.