DOJ Charges Google Staffer Over $1.2 Million in Insider Polymarket Trades

So here's a wild one. A Google software engineer just got hit with federal charges for allegedly doing something that sounds almost too brazen to be real: he used secret internal Google data to win $1.2 million on a prediction market website — basically a legal betting platform where you wager on real-world outcomes.

The guy's name is Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen living in Switzerland. According to prosecutors, he had access to confidential Google search data — the kind that tracks what people are Googling in real time — and he used that information to place bets on Polymarket, a popular platform where you can wager on things like who will be the most-searched person of the year.

Here's the setup: Google releases an annual "Year in Search" list showing the top-searched people and topics. On Polymarket, you could bet on who would top that list. Most regular bettors were just guessing. Spagnuolo, allegedly, already knew the answers — because he worked at Google and had access to the data. That's like betting on a horse race when you already know who won.

Operating under the username "AlphaRaccoon," he allegedly placed a number of bets on Google's most-searched person for 2025 and knew the outcomes of these wagers before the trading public did, according to prosecutors. He bet nearly $1 million that Kanye West's wife, Bianca Censori, would not be the most-Googled person. He also bet more than $600,000 that Pope Leo XIV would not take the top spot, and he placed another wager that the rapper D4vd would be the No. 1 most-Googled individual at a time when most Polymarket traders "assigned near-zero probability" to the singer. In all, according to prosecutors, Spagnuolo bet $2.7 million on 25 separate outcomes in the Google search market, netting $1.2 million in profit.

And the alleged cover-up attempt? Pretty classic. The charging documents say once Spagnuolo transferred his winnings out of his cryptocurrency wallet, he removed the name AlphaRaccoon from his Polymarket account. Spagnuolo appeared before a federal magistrate and was released on a $2.25 million bond. He now faces a serious stack of charges: commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other counts. The CFTC also filed a separate civil case on top of the criminal one.

Here's the broader context that makes this story even more interesting: this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Last month, a master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to rake in more than $400,000 on Polymarket. So this is now the second federal insider trading case tied to prediction markets in just a few weeks.

Why does this matter to you? If you use Polymarket or similar sites, you should know the playing field may not be as level as it looks. In prediction market forums on messaging sites such as Discord, users scour markets for large, unusual trades and encourage others to follow those bets with their own wagers — meaning regular users could unknowingly be chasing trades made with information they'll never have access to. While the laws that apply to the prediction market industry are less strict than stock market rules, what's commonly understood as "insider trading," or abusing non-public confidential information for profit, is illegal under federal law. And as this case shows, the DOJ is paying attention.