This is precisely the dark side of combining investing with prediction markets. According to the indictment, a Google engineer used internal search data to bet on Polymarket on who would be the “most searched person of the year” — and allegedly made about $1.2 million.

And that’s the point: it’s not clever analysis, but classic insider trading, just not on a stock but on a betting/prediction contract. Like the soldier who allegedly used classified information about a military operation, it demonstrates that once there is a “market for information,” an insider has an incentive to monetize it anywhere — not just on the stock exchange, but also on Polymarket, Betfair, or elsewhere.