A Google engineer is facing a raft of charges in the US after allegedly using confidential company data to profit $1.2 million on Polymarket bets.
The Justice Department and the CFTC allege that Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo profited $1.2 million on Polymarket after accessing non-public information at work. US authorities have charged a Google employee with allegedly using information from the company to make bets on Polymarket and profit $1.2 million.on Wednesday that it unsealed charges against Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo, accusing him of accessing unreleased internal information at Google and placing 25 bets worth $2.7 million on markets related to the most searched individuals on Google in 2025.
Prosecutors said Spagnuolo owned the Polymarket account “AlphaRaccoon”, which profited $1.2 million on “outcomes that the market treated as unlikely” when Google published information on the most searched individuals in December.into Polymarket and Kalshi on Friday, questioning the companies’ response to incidents of insider trading on the platform, with lawmakers concerned that government officials are using insider knowledge to make bets.in a statement that the charges “reinforce a decades-old message: Corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets. ” According to the court documents, communities on Discord and X started discussing the possibility that AlphaRaccoon was a Google insider in December.
Soon after, the username was allegedly changed to a wallet address. Prosecutors alleged that the funds in the AlphaRaccoon account were also sent to a decentralized crypto swapping service and to an unnamed transfer service that offers privacy protection for blockchain transactions The Justice Department charged Spagnuolo with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, and could face a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison.
CFTC director of enforcement, David Miller, said in a statement that “the division is a cop on the beat in policing the illegal use of inside information in the prediction markets and other markets within the CFTC’s jurisdiction. ”“We will continue to take action to protect markets from insider trading and other forms of fraud, abuse and manipulation,” Miller added. ETH bears growling, Tom Lee’s buying, XRP to ‘explode’: Market Moves
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