Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Google software engineer, was arrested in New York and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering for using confidential Google data to place bets on the Polymarket prediction market, earning about $1.2 million in profits [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen living in Switzerland and employed at Google for more than 12 years, placed bets totaling roughly $2.7 million between 2024 and 2025 using nonpublic internal information known as "Google Confidential," including data from the "Year in Search 2025" rankings [1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8]. His Polymarket account operated under the names "AlphaRaccoon" and sometimes "AlphaRacoon" [1, 2, 4, 9].
The confidential data allowed Spagnuolo to predict which public figures would top Google’s most-searched lists before the information was released. A striking example was his successful bet that musician D4vd would be the most-searched person in 2025, despite Polymarket placing nearly zero chance on that outcome [1, 3, 4, 6, 5]. He also placed winning bets on Kendrick Lamar and Pope Leo XIV during the October-November 2025 period [1, 3, 4]. FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz noted, "Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google’s confidential, commercially valuable internal data" [6].
Spagnuolo allegedly tried to conceal the source and ownership of his illegal gains [3, 5]. After his arrest on May 27, 2026, he was released on a $2.25 million bond [3, 5, 9].
Google confirmed the employee was placed on leave pending investigation and stressed that use of confidential data for betting violates company policy. A Google spokesperson said, "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies. We've placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action" [1, 10, 11].
Polymarket cooperated with law enforcement and became the first prediction market platform whose collaboration led to insider trading charges in the U.S. A Polymarket spokesperson said, "Blockchain trading is transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints" [10].
The charges follow a prior insider trading case involving a U.S. Army soldier betting on the capture of Venezuelan President Maduro, marking this as the second known criminal prosecution tied to prediction markets [3, 10, 4].
The official Google Year in Search 2025 rankings were publicly released in early December 2025, following the period when Spagnuolo placed his bets based on internal data [1, 2, 3]. The case is ongoing with court proceedings expected to continue through the year.
