Thought Leadership
A Google employee has been arrested in New York, accused of leveraging internal search data to generate millions in profits on the prediction market platform Polymarket.
In New York City, federal prosecutors have unsealed criminal charges against a senior engineer at Google. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alleges that 36-year-old Italian national Michele Spagnuolo misused confidential, commercially sensitive insider information from his employer.
According to the indictment, Spagnuolo allegedly exploited non-public data to place targeted financial bets on user search behavior via the decentralized crypto-based prediction platform Polymarket.
Authorities have charged him with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Spagnuolo, who resides in Switzerland and worked out of Google’s Zurich office, was arrested by federal agents on May 27, 2026, upon entering the United States in New York. At his initial court appearance before a federal judge, he pleaded not guilty and was released on $2.25 million bail, including $1 million in cash collateral.
Alias “AlphaRaccoon” on Polymarket
At Google, Spagnuolo worked as a senior security engineer focused on web signal analytics. His role granted elevated access to internal data systems and tools that aggregate global search behavior in real time. These systems are explicitly marked with internal confidentiality warnings.
According to FBI investigation records, Spagnuolo created a trading account on the blockchain-based platform Polymarket in May 2024 under the alias “AlphaRaccoon.”
Between October 15 and December 4, 2025, he allegedly used this account to risk approximately $2.75 million across 25 separate prediction markets. The trades primarily focused on the rankings of Google’s annual “Year in Search” report for 2025. Because of his position, he allegedly had early access to the final results before public release, effectively turning the trades into near-risk-free predictions.
Profits from Google’s most searched figures
The indictment details extensive trading activity under the AlphaRaccoon account. Among the bets was a position predicting that singer-songwriter D4vd would become the most searched person of 2025 on Google. At the time of placement, Polymarket participants assigned near-zero probability to the outcome, resulting in extremely high odds.
Toward the end of 2025, the musician’s name surged in global search interest following reporting around a criminal investigation.
After Google officially published its search rankings on December 4, 2025, the AlphaRaccoon account reportedly earned about $1.2 million in profit from this single trade alone. The engineer also placed substantial bets against market expectations, including positions on whether major cultural phenomena such as Squid Game would fail to rank among the top search trends.
“Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these bets before the trading public became aware of them, as he had access to Google’s confidential, commercially valuable internal data. After the conclusion of the betting markets, the defendant attempted to obscure the origin of the funds through crypto transactions and removed the username from the platform.”
Official indictment
Access to marketing trends broadly available internally
In addition to the criminal charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Spagnuolo also faces a civil case from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which alleges violations of insider trading rules applicable to commodities and futures markets.
A Google spokesperson confirmed cooperation with law enforcement and stated that the employee was immediately suspended. The company emphasized that access to underlying marketing trend data is available via internal tools broadly accessible to employees, but using such data for personal financial speculation constitutes a serious breach of internal policy and confidentiality obligations.
US soldier made over $400,000 in profit on Polymarket
Spagnuolo’s case marks the second high-profile prosecution of its kind in Manhattan in a short period. Last month, U.S. authorities charged a U.S. soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, with using classified operational knowledge about a planned military operation to capture Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro to generate more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton has reportedly prioritized enforcement actions against insider trading on crypto-based prediction platforms. While prediction markets have historically been less strictly regulated than traditional financial markets, the misuse of non-public corporate or governmental data is still prosecutable under federal law.
A Polymarket spokesperson said the platform fully cooperates with authorities and stressed that blockchain-based transactions leave transparent digital footprints that make illicit activity traceable.
Implications for IT governance and risk management
The incident carries significant implications for enterprise IT governance and strategic risk management in global organizations. It highlights how traditional access controls may fail when privileged users such as security engineers or data analysts repurpose internal data for external speculative platforms.
Effective risk management, experts argue, requires continuous monitoring of data exports and behavioral analytics capable of detecting unusual query patterns in internal systems. Compliance frameworks may also need to explicitly prohibit participation in prediction markets using proprietary data, closing regulatory gray zones and reducing reputational risk.
