Federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint on Wednesday charging a Google software engineer with using non-public company data to make more than $1.2 million in illegal profits on the prediction marketplace Polymarket.
According to CNN and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Michele Spagnuolo, 36, faces charges of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Operating under the anonymous Polymarket handle "AlphaRaccoon," Spagnuolo allegedly used Google's confidential "Year in Search" tracking tools to place $2.7 million in near-certain bets on the most-searched people of 2025.
Prosecutors said Spagnuolo placed wagers on high-payout outcomes, including a bet on singer D4vd to top the charts before Google released the list publicly. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said corporate insiders will not be permitted to use stolen corporate data to cheat prediction markets.
