DOJ charged Michele Spagnuolo, a Google software engineer, in the Southern District of New York on May 27 with wire fraud, commodities fraud under the Commodity Exchange Act, and money laundering.
The government’s complaint alleges Spagnuolo accessed an internal Google tool to pull confidential, nonpublic data on the company’s 2025 “Year in Search” rankings, then bet those outcomes on Polymarket under the handle “AlphaRaccoon.” Between October 15 and December 4, 2025, that account risked approximately $2,754,092 across approximately 25 contracts the platform had priced as unlikely outcomes. He won “with near-perfect accuracy,” netting roughly $1.2 million in profit.
He didn’t bet small: $937,688 against Bianca Censori as the top-searched person of 2025, $613,587 against Pope Leo XIV taking the top slot, and $509,149 against Donald Trump. The account covered a dozen others including Kendrick Lamar, Luigi Mangione, Taylor Swift, and Squid Game.
Discord and X communities noticed in early December 2025. After speculation that AlphaRaccoon was a Google insider, the username was stripped from the account, reverting to an alphanumeric wallet address. Google acknowledged Spagnuolo accessed the data through a tool available to all employees but called it “a serious breach of our policies” and placed him on leave.
It’s the second federal criminal case involving prediction-market insider trading in 2026. In April, a U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant was charged for trading on classified military intelligence about a Venezuela operation, booking more than $400,000. Federal prosecutors are treating prediction markets like securities exchanges: access material nonpublic information, face the same criminal exposure.
The CFTC filed a parallel civil complaint on May 27, seeking disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, and a permanent injunction. Wire fraud and money laundering each carry up to 20 years; the Commodity Exchange Act count carries up to 10. Arraignment in the Southern District is next.
James Okafor