A Google security engineer, Michele Spagnuolo, was arrested and charged with alleged insider trading by placing bets on Polymarket on what Google users were searching for, US officials alleged Wednesday.
According to a complaint unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Spagnuolo used “material non-public information” to place bets on who would appear on Google’s list of most searched people by 2025, after Polymarket began offering these markets last fall.
Spagnuolo allegedly used an internal Google tool to track who the most searched people were and transferred about $3.8 million in USDC to a Polymarket address, according to the complaint, which was signed by FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz.
The account, which used the username “AlphaRaccoon,” was betting that D4vd (a rapper recently accused of murdering a 14-year-old girl) would be one of the most wanted individuals in late November. Spagnuolo allegedly accessed Google’s internal tool, which displayed the D4vd trend, a few hours before the AlphaRaccoon account placed the bet.
User AlphaRaccoon moved 5 million USDC.e from his Polymarket account to a wallet, before moving the funds through an exchange service and privacy tool, according to the complaint. Some of the funds were eventually transferred to an account at a payment processor in Italy, which had been opened by someone using Michele Spagnuolo’s government ID card.
“Unlike his trading counterparties, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these bets before the trading public because he had accessed Google’s confidential and commercially valuable internal data,” the complaint says. “Spagnuolo personally earned more than approximately $1,200,000 from his trading based on non-public information. Once he won, Spagnuolo took deliberate steps to conceal his illegal use of non-public information by attempting to conceal the source and ownership of his illegal profits.”
Spagnuolo is charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, according to the complaint.
Wednesday’s charges mark the second major arrest of someone who allegedly traded on Polymarket using insider information, following an earlier arrest of a U.S. Army soldier who allegedly bet on the Nicolás Maduro raid he was part of.
