Google security engineer arrested and indicted for alleged insider trading on Polymarket

Odaily Planet Daily News According to indictment materials released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Google security engineer Michele Spagnuolo has been arrested and indicted for allegedly using material non-public information to place bets on Polymarket related to Google user search results.



The indictment alleges that Spagnuolo used Google's 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, allegedly placed bets on D4vd becoming one of the most searched people in late November just hours after accessing the internal tools.



The indictment further alleges that AlphaRaccoon transferred 5 million USDC.e from a Polymarket account to a wallet and moved the funds through exchange services and privacy tools, with some of the funds eventually ending up in the account of a payment processing institution in Italy. Spagnuolo is accused of profiting more than $1.2 million from the related transactions and now faces charges of commodity fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.