A Google engineer made more than $1 million using inside information to place Polymarket bets based on what users were for searching on Google.
Michele Spagnuolo, a Google information security engineer, had access to company data that tracked user searches according to a federal criminal complaint that was unsealed on Wednesday.
The complaint said that Spagnuolo “misappropriated confidential and valuable nonpublic information from his employer and used that information to place a series of Google-related bets on Polymarket, a prediction market platform.”
“Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google’s confidential, commercially valuable internal data,” the complaint continued.
Spagnuolo bet, using the account name AlphaRaccoon, that Google’s most searched person in 2025 would be the signer D4vd. At the time of placing the bet, Polymarket assigned near-zero chance that D4vd was the number one most searched person on Google. After Google announced the results, AlphaRaccoon made $1.2 million on his bet.
“Once he won, Spagnuolo then took deliberate steps to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information by attempting to obscure the source and ownership of his unlawful proceeds,” the complaint stated.
ABC News reported:
Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen, was arrested Wednesday morning in New York, where he appeared briefly before a federal magistrate judge.
He did not enter a plea and was released on a $2.25 million bond, secured by $1 million cash, $50,000 of which needs to be posted Wednesday.
A Google spokesperson said in a statement, “We’re working with law enforcement on their investigation. 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. We’ve placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action.”