Google engineer charged in $1.2M Polymarket insider scheme tied to D4vd case
Federal prosecutors charged Google security engineer Michele Spagnuolo with using confidential internal search data to win $1.2 million on Polymarket bets tied to a market about D4vd's murder investigation, according to prosecutors. Spagnuolo allegedly exploited proprietary Google data not available to the public to gain an edge on the crypto-native prediction market. The case marks a rare instance of an employee at a major tech firm being charged over misuse of proprietary data to profit on a prediction market. The charge comes as Polymarket continues to face scrutiny over data integrity and fair access concerns on its platform.
Polymarket now faces a second proven insider-trading case in under a year after promising tightened surveillance, putting its data-monitoring claims under direct regulatory scrutiny. Any CFTC review of its market safeguards would delay its anticipated U.S. relaunch timeline. click
Brings the running tally of Google engineer-linked Polymarket cases to two within this coverage set, after the Spagnuolo insider-trading prosecution named yesterday, surfacing platform surveillance gaps as a live compliance risk for prediction-market venues accepting crypto-native order flow.