The DOJ said a Google engineer used confidential company information to mint over $1 million in profit on Polymarket.
A New York district attorney, Jay Clayton, said in a Wednesday news release that Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo used the tech giant’s confidential business information to make “more than $1.2 million in trading profits on Polymarket.”
Spagnuolo, who the DOJ identified as a 36-year-old Italian citizen living in Switzerland, created a Polymarket account in 2024 under the username “AlphaRaccoon.” Between October and December last year, he bet about $2,754,000 on markets related to Google’s internal information.
James C. Barnacle, Jr., an FBI assistant director, said in the release that Spagnuolo had access to “confidential trends” within Google, which he may have abused for profit.
Spagnuolo is accused of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, wire fraud, and money laundering. The charges carry a combined maximum sentence of 50 years in prison.
“Today’s charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets,” Clayton said.
According to a LinkedIn account tied to his name, Spagnuolo was a staff information security engineer and was involved in creating the infrastructure to deploy AI agents within Alphabet.
The DOJ’s charging of Spagnuolo comes as prediction markets are being increasingly scrutinized in the US.
Markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, which allow users to wager on events such as sports, politics, or pop culture, have come under strong criticism from lawmakers who say they enable insider trading.
Last week, Minnesota was the first US state to announce a blanket ban on prediction markets, which is set to go into effect in August. Several lawmakers have proposed bills to contain the markets, such as California Sen. Adam Schiff and Utah Sen. John Curtis’ “Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act.”
Polymarket and Kalshi have both said they have put in guardrails against insider trading, such as preemptively blocking politicians and sportspeople from placing bets.
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