Federal prosecutors in the US have charged a Google employee with fraud after allegedly using confidential company information to make about $1.2 million from trades linked to prediction market platform Polymarket.
The employee, Michele Spagnuolo, a staff information security engineer at Google, was accused of using insider access to confidential Google “Year in Search 2025” data to place successful bets on outcomes tied to the company’s annual search rankings. Prosecutors alleged that Spagnuolo used the information to correctly predict that singer d4vd would become Google’s most searched person of 2025.
The criminal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York and unsealed on Wednesday, charged Spagnuolo with wire fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering.
According to the complaint, Spagnuolo had access to Google’s internal systems, including a software tool containing confidential and non-public “Year in Search” data.
“Spagnuolo had access to Google’s internal data systems, including a particular Google internal software tool that provided him access to confidential, nonpublic Year in Search data,” prosecutors stated in the filing.
Investigators also linked Spagnuolo to the Polymarket account “AlphaRaccoon,” which had drawn attention from users of the platform in December over unusually accurate trades involving Google search-related contracts.
Prosecutors alleged that after Google publicly released its Year in Search 2025 results on December 4, 2025, the AlphaRaccoon account generated approximately $1.2 million in profits from the trades.
Court documents further alleged that Spagnuolo correctly predicted outcomes in several other search-related markets, including whether New York politician Zohran Mamdani would rank among Google’s top five most searched figures and whether Netflix series “Squid Game” would become the most searched television show.
Spagnuolo appeared before a federal magistrate judge on Wednesday but did not enter a plea. Reports said he was later released on a $2.25 million bond.
Google confirmed that it is cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the investigation.
“We’re working with law enforcement on their investigation,” the company said in a statement. “The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies.”
The company added that the employee had been placed on leave pending further action.
Polymarket also said it cooperated with investigators.
“Polymarket worked closely with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the CFTC, and is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States,” a spokesperson for the platform said.
The spokesperson added that the company remained committed to maintaining “accurate, fair, and transparent markets” while working with regulators and law enforcement agencies.
In a parallel civil action, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Spagnuolo of insider trading and seeking personal financial gain from confidential information entrusted to him through his role at Google.
“Spagnuolo misappropriated the material Confidential Information by knowingly or recklessly using it to trade the 2025 Year in Search List Contracts in breach of his duties of trust and confidentiality,” the CFTC complaint stated.
The case is the second major insider trading investigation involving Polymarket in recent weeks. In April, US authorities arrested an active Army Special Forces master sergeant, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, over allegations that he used classified information to place bets tied to a US operation involving Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors said Van Dyke made more than $400,000 from the trades.
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