A Google engineer used internal search data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket. The DOJ has charged him.
Michele Spagnuolo allegedly traded under the handle ‘AlphaRaccoon’, netting $1.2m on Google’s Year-in-Search outcomes. It is the second federal criminal case tied to Polymarket.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Google information-security engineer based in Switzerland, with using internal Google search-trend data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket and profit $1.2m on the prediction-market platform’s 2025 Google Year-in-Search contracts.
The case, announced on Tuesday, is the second federal criminal prosecution connected to trading on Polymarket and the first in which the misappropriated information comes from inside a major Silicon Valley platform.
The mechanics are unusually specific. Polymarket ran a market in late 2025 on who would top Google’s Year-in-Search list, the company’s annual recap of the most-searched terms and people.
Spagnuolo, prosecutors allege, used an internal Google tool to access non-public search-trend data and then placed 25 separate bets on the market...
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