In New York, USA, law enforcement officials have arrested Google security engineer Michele Spagnolo for insider trading on the prediction market platform Polymarket, according to ABC News citing materials from the Southern District of New York Prosecutor's Office.
The 36-year-old Italian citizen, residing in Switzerland, faces charges of commodity and electronic fraud, as well as money laundering. According to the investigation, under the account name AlphaRaccoon, Spagnolo made trades worth $2.7 million on contracts related to Google between October and December 2025, earning over $1 million in profit using internal data on user search queries.
His largest profit of $1.2 million came from contracts on Google Year in Search 2025, where he had prior knowledge that the most searched person on Google would be singer D4vd, despite Polymarket estimating the likelihood of this outcome to be close to zero. The prosecution claims that by the time of the trade in November, Spagnolo already possessed this information due to access to internal marketing materials from Google.
After winning, the engineer took steps to conceal the source and ownership of the funds. The court released Spagnolo on a $2.25 million bail, with $1 million paid in cash. Google has suspended the employee and stated that he accessed the data through a tool available to all company employees, while Polymarket confirmed close cooperation with authorities in the investigation.