The software engineer is accused of tapping an internal Google tool to identify top search trends and wager on Year in Search outcomes ahead of any public disclosure

2 min read·Updated May 28, 2026

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A Google $GOOGL software engineer was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after allegedly using confidential internal company data to place bets on the prediction market platform Polymarket, netting more than $1.2 million in profits, according to NBC News.

Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, was arrested in New York and appeared before a federal magistrate judge, who released him on a $2.25 million bond secured by $1 million cash, according to ABC News. He did not enter a plea.

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Court documents allege that Spagnuolo, who used the Polymarket handle "AlphaRaccoon," exploited an internal Google $GOOGL tool — one open to the entire workforce — to pull up data showing which searches were trending most heavily that year. Prosecutors say he then wagered on Polymarket on celebrity search rankings for the year, doing so well before Google made those standings public through its annual Year in Search report, according to CBS News.

The single biggest source of his winnings was a wager on D4vd, a singer whom Polymarket's odds had pegged as an extreme long shot to top Google $GOOGL's search rankings for the year, according to NBC News. Once Google released the Year in Search 2025 findings on Dec. 4, 2025, the AlphaRaccoon account had accumulated $1.2 million in gains from those wagers, according to ABC News.

The indictment also charges that, after collecting his winnings, Spagnuolo routed the funds through cryptocurrency to hide the trail back to his misuse of internal company data. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a civil lawsuit against him on similar grounds, according to CBS News.

In a statement to ABC News, a Google spokesperson said the company has been assisting law enforcement, confirmed Spagnuolo is on leave, and described the conduct as a violation of company policy, saying that betting with confidential information represents "a serious breach of our policies." Polymarket confirmed it had identified the suspicious account and assisted federal investigators, with a company spokesperson stating it stands as "the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States," according to CBS News.

The case is the second this year tied to alleged insider trading on Polymarket. In a separate case, Gannon Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, has entered a not guilty plea to federal charges alleging he bet on Polymarket using classified knowledge of the military operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, according to ABC News.

Google engineer accused of parlaying secret search data into $1.2M on Polymarket

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