A Google safety engineer has been charged with crimes stemming from allegedly putting trades on Polymarket utilizing confidential inside info from the tech big. Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen, was arrested this morning in New York, as first reported by ABC Information.
Spagnuolo is charged with one rely every of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and cash laundering. He has labored at Google since 2014 and was primarily based out of the corporate’s Zurich, Switzerland workplaces.
Based on the criticism, Spagnuolo positioned trades on Polymarket from round October 2025 to December 2025 utilizing inside Google information. In a single occasion, he netted $1.2 million buying and selling on who Google’s most-searched particular person of the 12 months can be in 2025, appropriately predicting that the winner can be D4vda as soon as obscure singer who grew to become the topic of intense public scrutiny after he was suspected of homicide. (D4vd was finally charged within the case in April.)
“Not like the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the result of those wagers earlier than the buying and selling public did as a result of he had accessed Google’s confidential, commercially priceless inside information,” FBI agent Brandon Racz wrote within the criticism.
That is the second identified arrest in the US for illicit exercise on prediction markets. In April, a US Military particular forces officer was arrested for allegedly putting bets on markets associated to the seize of former Venezuelan chief Nicolás Maduro. Each circumstances have been introduced by the Southern District of New York.
OpenAI fired an employee earlier this 12 months for utilizing insider info to make trades on a prediction platform, however that is the primary time {that a} tech employee has been arrested for his or her alleged exercise.
Polymarket has come under fire from lawmakers for its fame as a hub of criminality. Final week, Home Committee on Oversight and Authorities Reform chairman James Comer launched an investigation into insider buying and selling on prediction markets platforms and requested info from Polymarket about how the corporate vets its prospects. There are two variations of Polymarket: a smaller platform that’s authorized in the US, and a a lot bigger offshore model that’s technically blocked within the US and the place merchants use cryptocurrency to position their wagers.
“We’re working with legislation enforcement on their investigation. The worker accessed our advertising materials utilizing a software obtainable to all staff, however utilizing such confidential info to position bets is a severe breach of our insurance policies. We’ve positioned the worker on depart and can take the suitable motion,” Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez mentioned in a press release to Wired.
“Polymarket labored carefully with the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York and the CFTC, and is the one prediction platform up to now whose cooperation has led to insider buying and selling expenses in the US,” Polymarket spokesperson Connor Brandi instructed WIRED. “Blockchain buying and selling is clear, traceable, and dangerous actors depart footprints. We’re dedicated to sustaining correct, truthful, and clear markets in addition to implementing our guidelines and dealing with our regulators and legislation enforcement.” In a social media put up, Polymarket said the arrest was the results of a referral it made to authorities.
Anybody can hint exercise on Polymarket’s crypto-based platform, since all the pockets transactions are public. Spagnuolo allegedly made his trades utilizing an account with the person identify AlphaRaccoon, which Polymarket watchers had lengthy speculated might have belonged to a Google insider, for the reason that odds of appropriately predicting the solutions to the questions he wagered on had been so inconceivable.
Earlier this month, Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee, which is tasked with regulating prediction markets within the US, instructed WIRED that the company was using synthetic intelligence instruments to hunt for market manipulation and insider buying and selling within the trade.
