U.S. prosecutors charged a Google software engineer with insider trading on Wednesday, alleging the employee used confidential company search data to win more than $1.2 million in wagers on the prediction platform Polymarket. The complaint, unsealed in New York, marks a federal effort to apply traditional insider-trading frameworks to the cryptocurrency-adjacent betting markets that have gained mainstream traction in recent years.
The Southern District of New York identified the employee as 36-year-old Michele Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen who has resided in Switzerland and worked for Google since 2014. According to the complaint, Spagnuolo traded under the online name “AlphaRaccoon” and accessed Google’s internal 2025 “Year in Search” data before the company made the information public.
Federal prosecutors said the engineer used the advance knowledge to place wagers on Polymarket regarding which people would be the most trending Google searches of the previous year. The activity reportedly yielded an alleged profit of more than $1.2 million before investigators intervened.
“This week’s charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets,” Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Wednesday. “Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted.”
The case places new scrutiny on prediction markets, which have grown in popularity as venues for wagering on political and cultural outcomes. Regulators have previously warned that trading contracts tied to corporate events or publicly relevant data may trigger federal fraud statutes when participants rely on non-public information.
The complaint alleges that the 2025 search-trend data constituted material, confidential information that gave Spagnuolo a structural advantage over other market participants. Google’s annual “Year in Search” report is typically published in December and ranks the most queried terms and public figures across the platform. Prosecutors said accessing the analytics before publication allowed the engineer to capitalize on market movements ordinary users could not anticipate.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the criminal case. The company’s internal compliance protocols typically restrict early access to annual search trend data, treating it as proprietary until its official public release.
Spagnuolo faces federal counts of insider trading and securities fraud. Court records did not immediately indicate whether the engineer has been taken into custody or scheduled for an initial appearance.