A Google employee has been charged with insider trading after allegedly using confidential company data to place bets totalling $1.2m, according to court documents unsealed today in New York.
Sources confirm the worker, whose name remains under seal, accessed internal dashboards tracking advertising revenue forecasts before public earnings releases. The scheme ran for at least 18 months, with bets placed through a series of offshore accounts and cryptocurrency wallets designed to evade detection.
“This is a clear violation of trust,” said a senior investigator with the Securities and Exchange Commission, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They didn’t just break rules. They weaponised privileged information for personal gain.”
The investigation began after a routine audit flagged unusual trading patterns linked to an employee’s personal devices. Documents show the worker made more than 200 separate bets on stock options and binary contracts, each timed precisely ahead of quarterly reports that moved markets by up to 5%.
Google’s compliance team immediately suspended the employee and handed over records to federal prosecutors. The company has since tightened internal data access logs and rolled out new machine-learning tools to monitor anomalous queries by staff.
But the case raises serious questions about how much access junior employees have to sensitive revenue figures. Unlike traditional financial firms where trading is walled off, tech giants often operate with more porous data sharing, leaving the door open for manipulation.
“This is not a rogue actor problem,” said Dr. Eleanor Park, a former FBI cybercrimes analyst. “It’s a structural flaw. If one person can pull $1.2m out of internal data, how many others are doing it more carefully?”
Defence lawyers have declined to comment. However, sources familiar with the case say the worker is cooperating and that a plea deal is likely.
No charges have been filed against Google itself. The company will not face penalties under the current exchange rules, although the SEC is reviewing whether to broaden liability for technology firms whose internal data fuels insider betting.
