Prosecutors accuse Google employee of insider betting on Polymarket

Federal prosecutors in New York have charged Michele Spagnulo, a 36-year-old Google software engineer and Italian citizen living in Switzerland, with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering in connection with alleged insider trading on the prediction market platform Polymarket, NBC News reported.

According to the federal complaint, Spagnulo allegedly used confidential internal Google search data to place a series of bets on Polymarket between October and December. Prosecutors claim he accessed commercially valuable internal information tracking user search activity and used it to predict future search trends before the information became public.

As a result, Spagnulo, who allegedly used the username «AlphaRacoon,» earned more than $1.2 million through successful wagers tied to Google search trends. Prosecutors specifically allege that he correctly bet singer D4vd, who was accused of murdering a teenage girl last year, would become Google’s most-searched person of the year in 2025. At the time the bets were placed, the prediction market reportedly assigned a near-zero probability to that outcome.

Google confirmed that the employee accessed internal marketing materials via a company tool, emphasizing that using confidential information for betting purposes would violate company policies.

Earlier this year, federal authorities charged a U.S. Special Forces soldier with allegedly using classified information related to Venezuela to place bets on the platform. The defendant in that case has pleaded not guilty.