A Google cybersecurity engineer allegedly turned his access to internal search trend data into a $1.2 million payday on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in New York charged Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Staff Information Security Engineer, with using confidential company information to place bets on a blockchain-based prediction market.
The charges, unsealed on May 27, include commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Spagnuolo was arrested the same day and later released on a $2.25 million bond.
The AlphaRaccoon scheme
Spagnuolo allegedly used nonpublic search trend data from an internal Google tool to predict the outcome of Google’s Year in Search 2025, the company’s annual recap of the most-searched terms and people. He reportedly bet that singer D4vd would be named the most searched person, a result announced publicly on December 4, 2025.
His Polymarket account was registered under the pseudonym AlphaRaccoon.
