Google software engineer charged with insider trading on Polymarket after allegedly making more than $1 million betting on search data

Michele Spagnuolo, 36, a Google engineer who joined Alphabet Inc. in 2014, was charged in federal court in New York on Wednesday. He allegedly used company data tracking user searches to bet on Polymarket that D4vd (singer David Anthony Burke) would be Google's most-searched person in 2025, and made around $1.2 million when D4vd was publicly announced as the top-searched person in December.

At the time Spagnuolo placed his bet, Polymarket had assigned a "near-zero probability" to D4vd being the top-ranked search ahead of figures like Pope Leo XIV and Kendrick Lamar. Spagnuolo traded under the username "AlphaRaccoon" and allegedly sought to add privacy protection to his cryptocurrency transactions.

Google said the employee accessed marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but stated that "using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies." The company has placed him on leave. The case follows a similar insider-trading charge against a US Army Special Forces master sergeant over a $400,000 bet on Polymarket.