Google Engineer Charged for Betting on Insider Data

On May 27, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York publicly unsealed an indictment, alleging that Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo used Google’s internal, unreleased “Annual Search Rankings” data to place illegal bets on the prediction market platform Polymarket, earning approximately 1.2 million (about 8.13 million yuan RMB). He is charged with three counts: commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. If all charges are found to be true, he faces a maximum sentence of up to 50 years in prison.

Spagnuolo is 36 years old and an Italian national. He joined Google’s Zurich office in 2014 as an information security engineer. Prosecutors said that between October and December 2025, he accessed confidential Google search trend data using his job-related authority, enabling him to know in advance the results of the annual search rankings. Using the account “AlphaRaccoon,” he placed bets on about 23 contracts on Polymarket, worth nearly 2.7 million, including bets such as “the person with the highest Google search volume in 2025.” The most representative example was betting on singer D4vd to top the chart, when the platform odds were “close to zero”; after Google officially released the rankings in December, he netted about 1.2 million. After profiting, he also attempted to obscure the source of the funds through cryptocurrency mixing services.

The FBI identified him by tracking sub-accounts registered with Italian IDs he used. Spagnuolo was arrested in New York on May 27, and after posting a 2.25 million bail he was released pending trial. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) simultaneously brought a civil lawsuit, seeking to recover the illegal proceeds and impose penalties.

In a statement, Google said the employee severely violated company policies, has been suspended, and is cooperating with the investigation. Polymarket said the platform is working closely with law enforcement, emphasizing that on-chain transactions are traceable. This case is also the second publicly exposed insider-trading investigation involving Polymarket in recent times, highlighting the gray area of regulation surrounding “insider information” in emerging crypto prediction markets.