--- title: "A Google engineer used internal search data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket. The DOJ has charged him." url: https://daily.dev/posts/a-google-engineer-used-internal-search-data-to-bet-2-7m-on-polymarket-the-doj-has-charged-him--ad8f7blve source_url: https://thenextweb.com/news/google-engineer-polymarket-insider-trading-charges type: article source: "The Next Web" published: 2026-05-28T07:33:18.607Z updated: 2026-05-28T07:34:00.992Z tags: ["google", "crypto"] reading_time: 3 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # A Google engineer used internal search data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket. The DOJ has charged him. **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged Michele Spagnuolo, a Google information-security engineer, with using internal Google search-trend data to place $2.7m in bets on Polymarket's 2025 Year-in-Search prediction market, netting $1.2m in profit. Trading under the alias 'AlphaRaccoon', Spagnuolo allegedly accessed non-public data via an internal Google tool to bet on outcomes including singer D4vd topping the Year-in-Search list — a near-zero probability bet that paid off. Charges include commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, with a parallel CFTC civil case. This is the second federal criminal case tied to Polymarket and the first involving misappropriated data from a major tech platform. The case comes amid growing regulatory pressure on prediction markets, including congressional probes and bans in Spain and India. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [US charges Google security engineer with Polymarket insider trading](https://daily.dev/posts/us-charges-google-security-engineer-with-polymarket-insider-trading-2pptzn5vj) · BleepingComputer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#google](https://daily.dev/tags/google), [#crypto](https://daily.dev/tags/crypto) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/a-google-engineer-used-internal-search-data-to-bet-2-7m-on-polymarket-the-doj-has-charged-him--ad8f7blve)