Polymarket traders flagged the anomaly back in December. Someone using the handle "AlphaRaccoon" was placing unusually large, confident bets on who would be Google's most-searched person of 2025. The market assigned a near-zero probability that indie artist D4vd would top the list. AlphaRaccoon bet big anyway and won $1.2 million. That someone was Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen and staff information security engineer at Google. Federal prosecutors charged him Wednesday with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, alleging he used confidential internal Google data to rig bets on Polymarket.
Spagnuolo worked out of Switzerland but was arrested in New York. He appeared before a federal magistrate judge Wednesday, did not enter a plea, and was released on a $2.25 million bond secured by $1 million cash. The scheme was brazen. According to a federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan, Spagnuolo accessed internal Google tools that held confidential, nonpublic "Year in Search" data.
He used that information to place 25 separate bets totaling $2.7 million on Polymarket, correctly predicting outcomes like which public figures would top Google's search rankings before the company publicly released its year-end data on December 4, 2025. The D4vd bet was the most glaring red flag. Polymarket's traders had assigned near-zero odds to the 21-year-old rapper, who has been charged with murder, becoming the most-searched person.
Spagnuolo knew differently because he had already seen the internal data. After Google's official announcement, his AlphaRaccoon account cashed out $1.2 million in profit.
Prosecutors said Spagnuolo also bet nearly $1 million that Kanye West's wife Bianca Censori would not be the most-Googled person, and more than $600,000 that Pope Leo XIV would not take the top spot. He placed an earlier bet in October that Kendrick Lamar would top the list, using internal data showing Lamar was on track.
He also wagered on outcomes like whether politician Zohran Mamdani would rank in the Top 5 and whether "Squid Game" would be the most-searched TV show.
"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," prosecutors said in the complaint.
After winning, Spagnuolo took deliberate steps to conceal his tracks, transferring winnings out of his cryptocurrency wallet and removing the AlphaRaccoon name from his Polymarket account, according to charging documents.
US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement that "corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets." Spagnuolo faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted.
Google said in a statement that the employee accessed marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but that using confidential information to place bets is "a serious breach of our policies." The company has placed Spagnuolo on leave and is cooperating with law enforcement.
Polymarket, which helped law enforcement investigate the activity, said it is "the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States." The case is the second high-profile Polymarket insider trading prosecution in just over a month. In April, a US Army Special Forces master sergeant was charged with using classified information about the raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to make more than $400,000 on the platform.
