From An Account Named “AlphaRaccoon” To A Near-Zero-Odds Bet On The Singer D4vd Being Google’s Top Search Of 2025. This Is Insider Trading For The Prediction-Market Age
According to ABC News, a federal criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in New York charges Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo, 36, with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Prosecutors allege he misappropriated confidential nonpublic information from his employer and used it to place a series of Google-related bets on Polymarket, a prediction market platform.
The mechanism was simple and devastating. As a Google engineer, Spagnuolo had access to internal data tracking what users were searching for. Using an account named “AlphaRaccoon,” he correctly bet that Google’s most-searched person of 2025 would be the singer known as D4vd at a time when Polymarket assigned a near-zero probability to that outcome.
When Google published its Year in Search results on December 4, 2025, the account named “AlphaRaccoon” profited $1.2 million. Prosecutors say he then took deliberate steps to conceal the source and ownership of his unlawful proceeds.
Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen, was arrested Wednesday and released on a $2.25 million bond. Google said he accessed marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies. It is the second prediction-market case the Southern District of New York has brought this year.
To check out our previous coverage on tech, financial crime, and the rise of prediction markets, read our articles here.
