U.S. federal prosecutors have charged Google chief software engineer Michele Spagnuolo with fraud and money laundering for allegedly using inside information to place bets on Google's 2025 annual search results on Polymarket.
Spagnuolo allegedly used an account named "AlphaRacoon",Accurate bets that singer-songwriter D4vd, who was recently arrested for murder, would become the most popular person in Google searches, Bianca Csori, Pope Leo and US President Trump will not occupy this position, netting a profit of approximately $1.2 million.
According to the indictment, Spagnuolo used internal Google software tools to access confidential annual search data. Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, publisher of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.