Google Employee Charged for Insider Trading on Polymarket Using Internal Search Data to Profit Over $1.2 Million

According to Fortune, U.S. prosecutors this week charged Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian software engineer at Google currently residing in Switzerland, with insider trading. Prosecutors allege that under the online alias “AlphaRaccoon,” Spagnuolo placed bets on the prediction market platform Polymarket—using internal Google search trend data—before the public release of Google’s “Search of the Year 2025” data, netting over $1.2 million in profits. The FBI identified Spagnuolo by tracing cryptocurrency payments. Google has suspended him and stated that betting using confidential information constitutes a serious violation of company policy. Spagnuolo is charged with violations of the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act, wire fraud, and money laundering, and faces potentially multiple years of imprisonment.