A Google information security engineer has been charged with using inside information to make over $1 million on the prediction market platform Polymarket. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, allegedly misused his access to Google's confidential data to place bets on what users were searching for, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in New York.
Spagnuolo, who used an account under the name AlphaRaccoon, placed bets on Google's most-searched person in 2025, correctly predicting it would be the singer D4vd. At the time of his bet, Polymarket assigned a near-zero probability to this outcome. After Google publicly announced its Year in Search 2025 results on Dec. 4, 2025, Spagnuolo's account profited $1.2 million from his bets.
The complaint alleges that Spagnuolo attempted to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information by obscuring the source and ownership of his proceeds. He was arrested Wednesday morning in New York and appeared before a federal magistrate judge. Spagnuolo did not enter a plea and was released on a $2.25 million bond, secured by $1 million cash.
A Google spokesperson stated that the employee accessed marketing material using a tool available to all employees but emphasized that using confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of company policies. The employee has been placed on leave, and Google will take appropriate action.