Google Engineer Charged in $1.2M Polymarket Insider Bet
- Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo was arrested Wednesday in New York after federal prosecutors unsealed charges of commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, alleging he fraudulently made more than $1 million through Polymarket bets.
- Spagnuolo's access to Google's confidential search data enabled him to bet through an account named AlphaRaccoon that singer D4vd would rank as Google's most-searched person in 2025—a prediction Polymarket assigned near-zero probability to.
- Prosecutors alleged that unlike other traders, Spagnuolo "knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data." After winning, he "took deliberate steps to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information."
- Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen, was arrested in New York and scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate Wednesday, though it remained unclear whether he had secured legal counsel.
- This case marks the second prediction market prosecution by the Southern District of New York this year; soldier Gannon Van Dyke pleaded not guilty last month to similar charges involving Polymarket bets on the classified Venezuela raid that ousted Nicholas Maduro.
235 Articles
235 Articles
It is Italian and would have earned more than $1 million on Polymarket
Google Engineer Charged in $1.2M D4vd Insider Bet
A Google software engineer with a decade-long career and a résumé full of accolades now faces up to 50 years in prison after federal prosecutors say he turned confidential search data into a $1.2 million windfall on prediction market Polymarket — all riding on singer D4vd’s meteoric rise in Google’s 2025 “Year in Search” rankings.
Michele Spagnuolo appeared before a federal magistrate on Wednesday and was released on bail of $2.25 million
Which person was Googled the most in 2025? This engineer knew it in front of the public – and made the information on a betting platform into money. It is the second arrest for insider trading on forecast markets.
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