Spagnuolo was also charged in a civil complaint by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
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The criminal and civil complaints were both filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Key facts
After the $2.7 million in bets netted a $1.2 million profit, the AlphaRaccoon Polymarket account received over $3.9 million in USDC.e, a stablecoin pegged to the value of the US dollar, the CFTC said
Between October 15, 2025, and December 4, 2025, “Spagnuolo’s AlphaRaccoon account risked approximately $2,754,092 on approximately 25 Google Year in Search 2025 outcomes that the market treated
Spagnuolo allegedly bet over $2.7 million and made a $1.2 million profit after Google publicly announced its Year in Search 2025 results in early December
The US charged a Google software engineer with insider trading after he allegedly made a profit of $1.2 million on Polymarket bets related to which public figures would top Google’s rankings
Summary
The US charged a Google software engineer with insider trading after he allegedly made a profit of $1.2 million on Polymarket bets related to which public figures would top Google’s rankings for the most searched names in 2025. Spagnuolo was charged “with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering arising from his scheme to misappropriate confidential information from his employer and use that information to place a series of profitable Google-related trades on a prediction market platform,” the Justice Department announced yesterday. An unsealed criminal complaint said that Spagnuolo, using the account name “AlphaRaccoon” on Polymarket, made bets on who would be the most-searched people on Google in 2025. Spagnuolo had access to internal Google systems, including a software tool with “confidential, nonpublic Year in Search data,” FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz wrote in the complaint. Google said it suspended the employee and is cooperating with law enforcement.