TLDR Michele Spagnuolo, a Google software engineer, was charged with insider trading, wire fraud, and money laundering He allegedly used confidential Google “Year in Search” data to place winning bets on Polymarket under the alias “AlphaRaccoon” He risked $2.75 million across 23+ contracts, earning $1.2 million in profit The case is the second major insider trading case linked to Polymarket in 2026 Google confirmed it assisted federal investigators and has placed Spagnuolo on administrative leave
A Google software engineer has been charged by federal prosecutors with using confidential company data to profit over $1.2 million on the prediction market platform Polymarket.
Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen living in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed criminal charges against him, including commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a separate civil complaint.
Spagnuolo worked as a software engineer at Google. His role gave him access to internal tools containing non-public data from Google’s annual “Year in Search” list — a ranking of the most-searched people and topics of the year.
Google labels this data as confidential. The company treats it as commercially sensitive because the rankings affect advertising, media coverage, and user traffic on its search platform.
How the Alleged Scheme Worked
Between October and December 2025, Spagnuolo allegedly used this inside data to place bets on Polymarket contracts predicting who would top Google’s most-searched list. He operated under the username “AlphaRaccoon.”
He risked approximately $2.75 million across at least 23 contracts. The trades generated around $1.2 million in profit.
Some of his positions were in outcomes the market considered nearly impossible. Prosecutors say the FBI found that a contract on musician D4vd becoming the most-searched person had a “near-zero