Google engineer charged for making $1.2M on Polymarket with inside info

The DOJ charged Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo with allegedly using unreleased internal data to trade on Polymarket.

Prosecutors say he bet on the year’s most searched people under the alias “AlphaRaccoon” and made over $1.2 million.

The alleged trades happened before Google published its 2025 Year in Search results.

The case signals tougher U.S. scrutiny of confidential-information misuse on prediction markets like Polymarket.