Spagnuolo, who worked at Google for 12 years, allegedly used a crypto wallet to put up $2.7 million of his own money across dozens of bets to net a nine-figure payday. Using the internal Google data as a reference, Spagnuolo, among other bets, wagered $937,688 that Bianca Censori, Kanye West’s wife, would not be the No. 1 person searched last year even as the average implied probability was about 85%.
He repeated the process several times, betting hundreds of thousands of dollars that well-known figures such as Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump would not be the top searched person, even when the probability was shown as high on Polymarket. He also bet on musical artist d4vd to be the top searched person of the year, even when the probability of that happening was near zero on the platform, according to the complaint.
“Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted,” said Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement.
A spokesperson for Polymarket said in a statement to Fortune it “is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States.”
At the same time, the Justice Department has recently cracked down on insider trading across several platforms, including Polymarket.
In April, the Justice Department charged an Army Special Forces Master Sergeant with using classified information about the U.S. operation to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to bet on Polymarket contracts to net more than $400,000.
As for the Google engineer case, a spokesperson for Google was working with law enforcement on the investigation.
“The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action.”
