A Google engineer used internal search data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket. The DOJ has charged him.

This article was published on May 28, 2026 Michele Spagnuolo allegedly traded under the handle ‘AlphaRaccoon’, netting $1.2m on Google’s Year-in-Search outcomes. It is the second federal criminal case tied to Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Google information-security engineer based in Switzerland, with using internal Google search-trend data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket and profit $1.2m on the prediction-market platform’s 2025 Google Year-in-Search contracts. The case, announced on Tuesday, is the second federal criminal prosecution connected to trading on Polymarket and the first in which the misappropriated information comes from inside a major Silicon Valley platform. The mechanics are unusually specific. Polymarket ran a market in late 2025 on who would top Google’s Year-in-Search list, the company’s annual recap of the most-searched terms and people. Spagnuolo, prosecutors allege, used an internal Google tool to access non-public search-trend data and then placed 25 separate bets on the market under an account named “AlphaRaccoon.” He bet nearly $1m that Kanye West’s wife Bianca Censori would not