A Google information security engineer who had advance access to Google's year-end round-up of popular searches, is accused of making $1.2 million on a Polymarket bet based on that insider info.
36-year-old Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo has been charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after federal investigators found that he had illegally placed and profited from a Polymarket bet in December. The bet was on what name would be Google's most-searched person of 2025, and Spagnuolo correctly bet, based on insider info, that it would the singer-songwriter D4vd — who was implicated in the death of his underage girlfriend in Los Angeles, after her body was found in the trunk of a car registered to him in September.
As ABC News reports via the federal complaint, at the time that Spagnuolo placed his bet in mid-October, Polymarket "assigned a near-zero probability to D4vd being 'the #1 searched person on Google this year.'" Then, when Google published its year-end search data, and D4vd came out as #1, Spagnuolo ended up netting $1.2 million from the bet.
"Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data," the complaint states.
Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen who resides in Switzerland, used the username AlphaRacoon in placing his bets.
"In total, from on or about October 15, 2025, through on or about December 4, 2025, Spagnuolo used the AlphaRaccoon account to risk approximately $2,754,092 on markets related to Google’s internal information," says the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
"Today’s charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets,” says US Attorney Jay Clayton in a statement. "As alleged, Spagnuolo violated the duties he owed to his employer and used Google’s confidential business information to make more than $1.2 million in trading profits on Polymarket. Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted.”
And FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. adds, "The FBI remains dedicated to searching for fraudsters who betray their employer for personal financial gains."
As the world of prediction-market betting grows, so does this kind of fraud. Another federal case involving a Polymarket bet was filed last month against a US Army soldier, Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who allegedly used classified information to place a bet about the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, netting $400K.
