By Bernadette Giacomazzo
Publication Date: 2026-06-02 18:20:00
A Google employee is facing federal charges after prosecutors accused him of using confidential company data to make more than $1 million betting on prediction markets tied to internet search trends — including a wager connected to singer D4vd.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday, May 27, in New York and obtained by ABC News, 36-year-old Google information security engineer Michele Spagnuolo allegedly accessed internal search analytics unavailable to the public and then used that information to place highly profitable bets through the prediction platform Polymarket. Federal prosecutors charged Spagnuolo with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
Investigators claim Spagnuolo leveraged his role at Google to monitor real-time search activity before official rankings and trend reports were released publicly. One of the most significant wagers involved a prediction that D4vd would become Google’s most-searched person of 2025. Prosecutors said the…