Google Engineer Charged with Insider Trading via Search Data

A 36-year-old Google software engineer was charged Wednesday with fraud and money laundering for using nonpublic search analytics to place bets on Polymarket, a prediction market platform, and earn over $1 million. He accessed internal trends data to wager on Google's most-searched person in 2025. Federal prosecutors are now treating prediction market manipulation as securities fraud, signaling a shift in enforcement priorities.