A Google employee has been arrested for allegedly using his access to company information to successfully place lucrative bets on the prediction platform Polymarket.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.Although Spagnuolo is an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, he was arrested on Wednesday and brought before a federal judge in New York.

Spagnuolo allegedly used information he had early access to through his work at Google, which is based in the US, to make bets that saw him rack up $1.2m (£894,330) in winnings.A spokeswoman for Google said the company was “working with law enforcement on their investigation” and that the employee had been placed on leave.The internal information that was allegedly used was marketing material accessed “using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies,” she added.A spokesman for Polymarket said the platform “worked closely” with authorities on the investigation.”Blockchain trading is transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints,” the spokesman added.Blockchain is a sort of digital record applied to cryptocurrency, which is the only currency Polymarket accepts.