RismadarVoice Reporters, May 28, 2026
A Google software engineer has been accused of using confidential company information to make more than $1.2 million in profits through bets placed on the prediction market platform Polymarket.
The engineer, identified as Michele Spagnuolo, is a 36-year-old Italian citizen living in Switzerland and is facing charges of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in the United States.
According to a federal complaint unsealed in New York, Spagnuolo allegedly used internal Google search-trend data to place bets on outcomes related to Google’s “Year in Search” rankings before the information became public.
Prosecutors say he operated under the username “AlphaRaccoon” and made a series of trades between October and December 2025, wagering heavily on unlikely outcomes that later proved correct once Google released its official data.
One of the most notable bets involved predicting that singer D4vd would become the most-searched person of 2025, a result that was later confirmed by Google’s published rankings.
Authorities allege that Spagnuolo accessed proprietary internal tools that gave him early insight into trending search data, allowing him to gain an unfair advantage over other traders on the platform.
The complaint further states that after earning the profits, he attempted to conceal the origin of the funds through deliberate financial obfuscation.
Google has confirmed that the employee accessed internal marketing tools and has since been placed on leave, adding that the company is cooperating with law enforcement investigations.
A spokesperson for Polymarket said the platform is working with authorities and has strict rules against insider trading, describing the case as part of broader efforts to ensure market integrity.
The case adds to growing regulatory scrutiny of prediction markets, which have recently seen similar allegations involving insiders using privileged information to profit from event-based betting systems.
