Google security engineer arrested and charged for insider trading on Polymarket

The prosecution materials released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York show that Google security engineer Michele Spagnuolo has been arrested and charged for allegedly using significant non-public information to bet on Google user search result-related markets on Polymarket.

The prosecution materials state that Spagnuolo used Google internal tools to track the list of the most searched people in 2025 and transferred approximately 3.8 million USDC to a Polymarket address; his associated account AlphaRaccoon placed a bet that D4vd would become one of the most searched people in late November after accessing internal tools for several hours.

The prosecution materials also state that AlphaRaccoon transferred 5 million USDC from the Polymarket account to a wallet and moved the funds through exchange services and privacy tools, with some of the funds ultimately entering an account at a payment processing institution in Italy. Spagnuolo is accused of profiting over 1.2 million dollars from the related transactions and currently faces charges of commodity fraud, telecommunications fraud, and money laundering.