A Google employee has been charged for allegedly using company information to place bets on the prediction platform Polymarket. Michele Spagnuolo, an engineer at Google, has been charged with breaking insider trading laws due to bets he placed on Polymarket.
According to the BBC, Polymarket worked closely with New York authorities on the investigation. Google has also been working closely with law enforcement since the charges came to light. Spagnuolo has since been placed on leave.
It's alleged that he used his insider information to place more than $2.7 million in bets on Polymarket since 2024, making $1.2 million in profit from those bets. The most lucrative wins for Spagnuolo came from successfully predicting who would be Google's most searched for person in 2025.
Spagnuolo did try and hide his tracks, using multiple cryptocurrency accounts to place bets on Polymarket, and using an anonymous account on the platform. However, the FBI managed to discover it was him making the bets by linking his accounts by finding one he'd opened with an Italian identification card.