Google employee polymarket insider trading

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged a Google employee with fraud, claiming he won $1.2 million in bets using inside information at Polymarket.

Prosecutors allege that Michele Spagnuolo, a staff information security engineer at Google, used confidential information to accurately place bets that singer d4vd would be the most searched person on Google in 2025.

Spagnuolo is charged with money laundering, commodity fraud and wire fraud. Complaint, Filed in the Southern District of New YorkIt was unsealed on Wednesday.

ABC News First, a report was made based on a complaint. Spagnuolo was arrested in New York on Wednesday morning, ABC reported.

“Spagnuolo had access to Google’s internal data systems, including a certain Google internal software tool that gave him access to confidential, non-public Annual Search data,” prosecutors wrote in their complaint. he said.

Some observers of the Polymarket platform marked the user as “AlphaRaccoon” Most wanted person in December due to suspicious transactions in contracts. The complaint filed on Wednesday stated that the person behind this account was Spagnuolo.

“Google officially and publicly announced the Year 2025 Search Results on or about December 4, 2025. Shortly after doing so, Spagnuolo’s AlphaRaccoon account profited approximately $1.2 million from bets related to the Year 2025 Search,” the complaint states. The statement was included.

Spagnuolo appeared before a federal magistrate judge on Wednesday, ABC reported. He did not enter a plea and was released on $2.25 million bail.

“We are working with law enforcement on the investigation,” Google said in a statement. “The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious violation of our policies.”

“We have placed the employee on leave and will take appropriate action,” the company added.

“Polymarket has worked closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the CFTC, and is the only forecasting platform to date whose collaboration has led to insider trading charges in the United States,” a Polymarket spokesperson said in a statement. “We are committed to maintaining true, fair and transparent markets, as well as enforcing our rules and working with our regulators and law enforcement.”

Spagnuolo also faces a civil lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to a listing in the federal court filing system.

The federal complaint marks the second high-profile insider trading case at Polymarket in just over a month.

In April, then-active U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant major Gannon Ken Van Dyke He was arrested on charges that he used classified information to bet on contracts related to the US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors said Van Dyke made more than $400,000 from his dealings.