Google employee accused of making over $1.2M by insider trading on Polymarket

Politics Google employee accused of making over $1.2M on Polymarket through insider trading By Joe Walsh Joe Walsh Senior Editor, Politics Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston. Read Full Bio Joe Walsh May 27, 2026 / 11:00 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google A software engineer at Google is facing federal charges after allegedly betting on confidential company information on Polymarket, netting more than $1.2 million in profits, the second insider trading prosecution against a user of the popular prediction market service in recent months.In court papers released by the Justice Department, Michele Spagnuolo was accused of using an internal company tool late last year to look up data on Google's top-trending searches of 2025. He then allegedly placed millions in bets on Polymarket 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 in its annual Year in Search report.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. Using the Polymarket username "AlphaRaccoon," Spagnuolo was accused of correctly betting hundreds of dollars that D4vd would show up in the most widely searched people, at a time when the market assessed the odds of D4vd appearing as fairly slim. Days after the Year in Search data was publicly announced, Spagnuolo's Polymarket account allegedly transferred millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to a crypto wallet.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.The charges against Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, were unsealed on Wednesday. He was arrested...