Google engineer made $1.2M by placing bets on Polymarket using confidential info, prosecutors allege - NBC News

A Google software engineer was accused Wednesday of using confidential company information to make over $1.2 million on Polymarket in the second significant criminal case tied to trades on the prediction market platform. Michele Spagnulo, 36, an Italian citizen living in Switzerland, is charged with one count each of commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, according to a federal complaint unsealed in New York City. Prosecutors accuse Spagnulo of placing a series of bets from October to December based on internal Google search data that tracked user searches. “Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnulo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google’s confidential, commercially valuable internal data,” the complaint alleges. Spagnulo did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday. Spagnulo, under the username “AlphaRacoon,” earned over $1.2 million after he correctly wagered that D4vd, the singer accused of killing a teenage girl, would be Google’s most-searched person of the year in 2025, court documents show. When Spagnulo bet on D4vd, the prediction market “assigned a near-zero probability” to the singer’s being the top-searched person on Google, prosecutors wrote. “Once he won, Spagnulo then took deliberate steps to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information by attempting to obscure the source and ownership of his unlawful proceeds,” according to the complaint. A Google spokesperson said the company is cooperating with law enforcement. “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,” the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the employee has since been placed on leave. A Polymarket spokesperson said in a statement that it is the “only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States.” “We are committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets as well as enforcing our rules and working with our regulators and law enforcement,” the spokesperson said. In April, federal authorities arrested and charged a U.S. Special Forces soldier with using classified information about the raid that removed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from office to make Polymarket bets. The soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. In a statement Wednesday, Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, derided “greed-driven” insider trading, saying it “compromises the integrity of our markets.” “Today’s charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets,” he said.