Google Engineer Accused of Polymarket Insider Trading Says He Was Just Gambling
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Michele Spagnuolo, the Google engineer arrested in May by U.S. authorities for alleged insider trading on Polymarket, is making a new bold bet. On Wednesday, his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him. Spagnuolo isn't outright denying that he made money using internal information from Google. Instead, his legal team says that…
Michele Spagnuolo, a former Google engineer, is facing charges of insider trading on the betting platform Polymarket, according to a report by Wired. His legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that the wagers were not financial instruments subject to regulation but rather ordinary international betting. Spagnuolo allegedly made over $1.2 million in profits using the alias "AlphaRaccoon" by correctly wagering on various events, including Google's most-searched person of the year in 2025.
The criminal complaint alleges that he committed commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Spagnuolo's lawyers contend that defining swaps to include wagers like yearly most-searched Google people would be absurd and lead to overbroad classification of activities as financial instruments. They also argue that the U.S. government had no jurisdiction over him due to his non-U.S. citizenship and the fact that he was wagering on a non-U.S. platform.
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