Google Security Engineer Arrested in Million-Dollar Polymarket Trading Scheme

Google security engineers are accused of dealing with the business Polimamarket using insider secrets from the tech giant. Michele Spagnuolo, 36 years old from Italy, he was arrested this morning in New York, as first reported by ABC News.

Spagnuolo is charged with one count each of racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. He has worked for Google since 2014 and is based out of the company’s office in Zurich, Switzerland.

According to the complaint, Spagnuolo placed ads on Polymarket from late October 2025 to December 2025 using Google’s internal data. One time, he got a $1.2 million ad that the person who has been searched the most by Google for the year will be in 2025, correctly predicting who the winner will be. D4vda previously unknown singer who was widely sought after he was suspected of murder. (D4vd was eventually indicted in April.)

“Unlike his trading partners, Spagnuolo knew the results of these bets before the trading public did because he had access to Google’s internal secrets,” FBI agent Brandon Racz wrote in the complaint.

This is the second known arrest in the United States for inappropriate behavior in the futures markets. In April, the commander of the special forces of the US Army he was arrested he says he is betting on markets related to the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Both cases were brought by the Southern District of New York.

OpenAI fired an employee earlier this year for using insider information to make trades on the prediction platform, but this is the first time a technology employee has been arrested for what he believed to be his personal information.

Polymarket has arrived on fire from law makers because it is known as a place for illegal activities. Last week, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform James Comer he started internal marketing research on market forecasting platforms and request information from Polymarket about the company’s approach to its customers. There are two types of Polymarket: a smaller platform that is legal in the United States, and a larger offshore version that is technically closed to the US and where traders use cryptocurrency to invest their money.

“We are working with the police in their investigation. The employee found our advertising material using a tool that is available to all employees, but using such confidential data for betting is a serious violation of our policies. We have placed the employee on leave and will take action,” Google spokeswoman Jaclyn Vazquez said in a statement to Wired.

“Polymarket worked closely with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the CFTC, and is the only forecasting site to date whose partnership has led to trading in the United States,” Polymarket spokesman Connor Brandi told WIRED. “Blockchain transactions are transparent, traceable, and wrongdoers are left out of the loop. We are committed to maintaining fair, fair, and transparent markets as well as complying with our rules and working with regulators and law enforcement.” In a social media post, Polymarket he said The arrest was the result of a referral to authorities.

Anyone can follow what is happening on the Polymarket crypto-based platform, since everything that happens on the wallet is public. Spagnuolo allegedly made his trades using an account with the name AlphaRaccoon, which Polymarket observers thought might be a Google Insider, because the chances of correctly predicting the answers to the questions he bet on were impossible.

Earlier this month, Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is responsible for regulating futures markets in the US, told WIRED that the commission. he was using smart tools for finding market distortions and trading within companies.