A Google software engineer has been hit with federal criminal charges for allegedly using confidential company data to place winning bets on Polymarket, the crypto-based prediction market platform.
Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen living in Switzerland, was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint on May 27. He allegedly earned approximately $1.2 million from trades that exploited insider knowledge about Google’s annual search trend rankings.
How a raccoon gamed the system
Spagnuolo operated on Polymarket under the username “AlphaRaccoon.” Prosecutors allege he placed over $2.7 million in bets tied to Google’s 2025 “Year in Search” results, leveraging confidential internal data about user search trends that wouldn’t become public until Google’s official announcement.
One of his more notable wagers: correctly predicting that singer D4vd would be named the most-searched individual of the year.
