A Google software engineer allegedly turned his employer’s most valuable asset, its search data, into a personal ATM. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, has been charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after federal prosecutors say he used nonpublic Google user search data to place bets on the Polymarket prediction market platform, netting over $1.2 million in the process.
The federal criminal complaint, filed on May 27, names Spagnuolo as the person behind the Polymarket account “AlphaRaccoon,” an account that had been flagged for unusual accuracy months before law enforcement caught up. His alleged edge was straightforward: he knew what the world was searching for before the world found out.
The AlphaRaccoon playbook
The scheme centered on Google’s Year in Search 2025, an annual report revealing the platform’s most popular queries. Those results were announced publicly on December 4, 2025. Spagnuolo allegedly knew the answers well before that date and placed bets accordingly on Polymarket, which hosts markets where users wager on real-world outcomes.
His record was, to put it mildly, suspicious. AlphaRaccoon went 22-for-23 on bets related to specific search trend outcomes, a 95.7% hit rate on events that are, by design, supposed to be uncertain.
