A Google employee allegedly used inside information to win $1.2 million on Polymarket
A Google employee has been charged with fraud for allegedly using insider information to win $1.2 million on Polymarket. Michele Spagnuolo reportedly accessed confidential data to place successful bets on search trends for 2025. He has been released on a $2.25 million bond and faces multiple charges, including commodities fraud and money laundering.
- ▪Michele Spagnuolo allegedly used Google's internal information to place bets on Polymarket.
- ▪He was arrested in New York and released on a $2.25 million bond.
- ▪Spagnuolo's successful wagers included predicting the most searched person on Google for 2025.
9 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 42 hours. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 1 lean left, 7 centre.
- ▪ Google engineer arrested for using internal search data to win $1.2 million on Polymarket — TechSpot
- ▪ A Google engineer is facing federal charges after allegedly using his employer’s confidential data to pocket $1.2 million on Polymarket — Fortune
- ▪ Google employee charged with using search data to make $1.2 mil on Polymarket — Korea Times
- ▪ Google engineer charged with using inside information to win $1.2M on Polymarket — Crypto Briefing
- ▪ Google worker charged for using internal data to make $1.2m on Polymarket — BBC News — Tech
- ▪ Google employee charged with fraud after winning $1.2m on Polymarket — Boing Boing
- ▪ Google Employee Charged For Alleged Polymarket Bets - The Information — Google News
- ▪ Google employee charged with using inside information to make $1M on Polymarket — ABC News — Top
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| Original publisher | The Verge |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theverge.com/tech/938635/google-polymarket-insider-trading-prediction-market-bets |
| Publication time | 2026-05-27T18:30:02-04:00 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T22:33:05.902Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T22:33:05.902Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | ypKKoWvjCvja · 10 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechBusinessCloseBusinessPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All BusinessPolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyA Google employee allegedly used inside information to win $1.2 million on Polymarket Prosecutors say that Michele Spagnuolo used Google’s internal info to place bets on the ‘Year in Search 2025’ results.Prosecutors say that Michele Spagnuolo used Google’s internal info to place bets on the ‘Year in Search 2025’ results.by Emma RothCloseEmma RothNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily…
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