Google Employee Arrested for Allegedly Using Insider Info to Win $1M on Polymarket

So here's a wild one — a Google software engineer was just arrested for essentially turning his day job into a cheat code at an online betting site. And the scheme? Surprisingly simple.

Meet Michele Spagnuolo, 36, a staff information security engineer at Google who lives in Switzerland. Federal prosecutors say he figured out that his access to Google's internal systems was basically a golden ticket. Every year, Google publishes its "Year in Search" — a flashy roundup of the most-searched people, topics, and trends. Spagnuolo allegedly pulled up that data months before it went public, then went and bet on the outcome on Polymarket, a popular prediction market platform where you can wager real money on real-world events.

Here's the kicker: the bets weren't even that exotic. According to court papers, Spagnuolo used an internal Google tool to look up data on the company's top-trending searches of 2025, then placed millions in bets on whether or not various celebrities would rank among the most searched people on Google that year — weeks before the company released that information publicly.

He wasn't just a one-and-done bettor, either. Spagnuolo allegedly kept making new trades as Google's internal search data evolved from October into December of last year. He initially bet on Kendrick Lamar — who headlined the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show — but when internal data showed that alt-pop singer D4vd was surging, he pivoted. He correctly bet, using an account under the name "AlphaRaccoon," that Google's most-searched person in 2025 would be the singer known as D4vd.

Why was D4vd so searched? The most widely searched person of 2025 ended up being D4vd, a singer who drew nationwide attention last year after a 15-year-old's dismembered body was found in the trunk of a car registered to him.

The total haul? More than $1.2 million in profits. After pocketing the winnings, Spagnuolo's Polymarket account allegedly transferred millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to a separate crypto wallet. Prosecutors say that was an attempt to cover his tracks.

Spagnuolo was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also sued him in civil court on similar grounds. He was arrested in New York and appeared before a magistrate judge, who released him on a $2.25 million bond.

Google's response was measured but firm. A spokesperson noted that Spagnuolo accessed marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but said using that confidential information to place bets is "a serious breach of our policies" — and that the company has placed him on leave.

This isn't an isolated incident for Polymarket. Just one month earlier, a U.S. special forces soldier was arrested for allegedly winning over $400,000 by betting on the raid to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro before news of the raid went public. The soldier pleaded not guilty. Earlier this year, a data analyst told "60 Minutes" he has spotted other cases of Polymarket accounts raking in millions by correctly betting on U.S. military operations, sometimes achieving an unbelievably high win rate.

Polymarket, for its part, is leaning into its cooperation with authorities. A spokesperson said the company worked closely with federal authorities, calling Polymarket "the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States." The platform recently rewrote its rules to clearly state that users cannot trade on contracts where they might possess confidential information, or could influence the outcome of an event.

Why does this matter to you? If you've ever used Polymarket, or any prediction market, you're betting against other users — some of whom, as this case shows, may know the answer before you do. And more broadly, this is a sign that regulators are starting to treat prediction markets like real financial markets, with real consequences for cheating.