A Google software engineer was charged Wednesday in a second major criminal case related to trading on the prediction market platform, accused of using confidential company information to make more than $1.2 million on Polymarket.
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According to a federal complaint unsealed in New York City, Michele Spagnolo, 36, an Italian resident of Switzerland, is charged with merchandise fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutors accuse Spagnolo of placing a series of bets between October and December based on internal Google search data that tracked users’ searches.
“Mr. Spagnolo, unlike his counterparties, had access to Google’s confidential and commercially valuable internal data and therefore knew the outcome of these bets before the general trader did,” the complaint alleges.
Spagnolo did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Using the username “AlphaRacoon,” Spagnolo made more than $1.2 million by predicting that D4vd, the singer accused of murdering a teenage girl, would be the most searched person on Google in 2025, according to court documents.
When Spanulo bet on D4vd, the prediction market “assigned a near-zero probability” that the singer would be the top searched person on Google, prosecutors wrote.
“After winning, Spagnuolo took deliberate steps to conceal his illegal use of nonpublic information by obscuring the source and ownership of the illegal proceeds,” the complaint says.
A Google spokesperson said the company is cooperating with law enforcement.
“The employee accessed our marketing materials using tools available to all employees, and using such confidential information to place bets is a serious violation of our policies,” the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the employee has since been placed on administrative leave.
A Polymarket spokesperson said in a statement that the platform is “the only prediction platform whose collaboration has ever led to insider trading charges in the United States.”
“We are committed to maintaining accurate, fair and transparent markets, enforcing rules and cooperating with regulators and law enforcement,” the spokesperson said.
In April, federal authorities arrested and charged a U.S. special forces soldier with using classified information about the attack that ousted Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro from public office to gamble on the political market. The soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.
In a statement Wednesday, Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, derided “greedy” insider trading and said it “undermines the integrity of the market.”
“Today’s indictment reinforces the decades-old message that corporate insiders cannot exploit confidential business information to profit in the marketplace,” he said.
