Michele Spagnulo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen living in Switzerland, used insider information to bet singer D4vd would be Google’s most-searched person of the year in 2025, according to prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors in New York charged a Google software engineer with making roughly $1.2 million in profits from bets on the prediction market platform Polymarket by using confidential insider information he learned about the most searched people of 2025.

The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York said it had charged Michele Spagnuolo, a Google engineer, with breaking insider trading laws because of several bets he placed through the platform.

Michele Spagnuolo allegedly used insider information to profit from bets on people on Google’s most-searched list.

Federal prosecutors charged a Google employee with fraud after he allegedly made $1.2 million on Polymarket bets related to Search-related trends in 2025, as reported earlier by ABC News. In their now-unsealed complaint,

A Google engineer is accused of using confidential company data to make $1.2 million from placing bets on Polymarket, according to a newly unsealed federal complaint.

The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York said it had charged Michele Spagnuolo, a Google engineer, with breaking insider trading laws because of several bets he placed through the platform.

A Google employee fraudulently made more than $1 million by using inside information to place Polymarket bets on what users were searching for on Google, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in New York.