A Google engineer has been charged with using corporate information to place lucrative bets on prediction market Polymarket, earning profits of $1.2 million (£890,000) from the activities, according to a complaint filed by the US Justice Department.
Italian citizen Michele Spagnuolo, 36, allegedly used information to which he had access as a Google employee, regarding the most popular searches on the platform, to place the bets, according to the charges by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Spagnuolo, who lives in Italy, was arrested last Wednesday and brought before a federal judge in New York, according to the unsealed legal filing.
Prediction markets
Prediction markets have ballooned into a massive industry worth billions of dollars in recent years, but are relatively lightly regulated, leading to concerns about how insiders could use private data to rig bets.
