Google Engineer Charged by DOJ for Using Internal Data to Bet $2.7m on Polymarket
May 28, 2026 – 7:12 am
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Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Google information-security engineer based in Switzerland, allegedly traded under the handle ‘AlphaRaccoon’, netting $1.2m on Google’s Year-in-Search outcomes. This is the second federal criminal case tied to Polymarket.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have accused Spagnuolo of misusing internal Google search-trend data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket, profiting $1.2m from the platform’s 2025 Google Year-in-Search contracts.
The case, announced on Tuesday, is unique as it’s the first federal criminal prosecution involving trading on Polymarket where the misappropriated information originated from a major Silicon Valley platform.
Polymarket ran a market in late 2025 predicting who would top Google’s Year-in-Search list. Spagnuolo allegedly used an internal Google tool to access non-public search-trend data and placed 25 separate bets under the "AlphaRaccoon" account.
He bet significant sums that Kanye West’s wife Bianca Censori wouldn’t finish top, Pope Leo XIV wouldn’t top the list, and positioned a meaningful amount on singer D4vd to finish first at a price Polymarket had set at near-zero probability.
D4vd won when Google announced the results on December 4, 2025, making Spagnuolo’s AlphaRaccoon account profit $1.2m. He subsequently removed the handle and moved his winnings out of the associated cryptocurrency wallet.
The charges include commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has also brought a parallel civil case.
This case is significant as it’s the most concrete application yet of US securities-style insider-trading law to a prediction-market trade. While Polymarket’s event contracts are regulated by the CFTC as derivatives, not the SEC as securities, prosecutors used the commodities-fraud statute, which applies to manipulation across any CFTC-regulated market.
Spagnuolo’s case comes amid a tightening regulatory squeeze on Polymarket. The US House Oversight Committee opened an investigation last Friday into how Polymarket and Kalshi customers might be using non-public information to trade. Spain blocked both platforms on Tuesday, and India formally blocked Polymarket on May 21.
A previous criminal case involved a U.S. soldier charged with using inside information to bet on Venezuelan political outcomes, netting roughly $400,000. Spagnuolo’s charges mark a significant escalation in these investigations.