A Google engineer is facing charges for allegedly using his access to confidential information to successfully place bets on prediction platform Polymarket, allowing him to pocket roughly $1.2 million.
Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen living in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday and brought before a federal judge in New York, where he was hit with counts with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. According to a newly unsealed criminal complaint, Spanuolog “misappropriated confidential and valuable nonpublic information from his employer and used that information to place a series of Google-related bets,” including niche gambles that were never really gambles at all.
“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 said.
Using an account with the name AlphaRaccoon, Spagnulo bet that musician D4vd would be the most searched person on Google in 2025. When he made the wager, Polymarket “assigned a near-zero probability to d4vd being ‘the #1 searched person on Google this year,’” per the complaint.
“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,” it continued.
Spanuolog did not enter a plea during his court appearance on Wednesday, and he was released on bail.
A spokesperson for Google told ABC News that it is cooperating with the 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,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action.”