A Google engineer bet $2.7M on Polymarket using secret search data — and walked away with $1.2M in profit When it comes to placing bets, part of the thrill is the unknown potential gain — or loss.
But when Michele Spagnuolo placed a bet on Polymarket last year, he probably had a pretty good idea of what the results would be
The 36-year-old software engineer was arrested last week and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after allegedly using confidential internal Google data to place bets on the platform’s most-searched person of 2025, according to NPR (1). Must Read Prosecutors say that Spagnuolo, trading under the username AlphaRaccoon, reportedly wagered $2.7 million across 25 separate bets — and walked away with $1.2 million in profit. He bet that Pope Leo XIV and Bianca Censori, who married Kanye West, would not take the top spot, but that rapper D4vd would. “The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies,” Google spokesperson Jaclyn Vazquez told NPR.
Prediction markets face continued scrutiny This isn’t the first time prediction market bets have resulted in federal charges. Last month, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was charged with using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to pocket more than $400,000 on Polymarket.