Google Employee Accused of Insider Trading on Polymarket
CFTC says Michele Spagnuolo made $1.2 million placing bets on Google’s 2025 'Year in Search Data'
WASHINGTON, May 29, 2026 – A Google employee made about $1.2 million using insider information to place winning bets on the Polymarket predictions market platform, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
The CFTC in a complaint accused Google employee Michele Spagnuolo of insider trading, saying the Switzerland-based employee made online trades under the handle “AlphaRaccoon.” Spagnuolo allegedly used the company’s 2025 “Year in Search Data” before it was made publicly available to inform wagers on the most searched people last year.
From approximately Oct. 15, 2025, and Dec. 4, 2025, Spagnuolo allegedly placed trades on at least 23 contracts pertaining to who would and wouldn’t appear in 2025 trending searches. The contracts included figures such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Zohran Mamdani. He correctly predicted “virtually all of the outcomes on these positions” according to the complaint.
Spagnuolo accessed the confidential rankings information through an internal software tool on at least two occasions before placing trades related to the results. The rankings were not made public until Google released its annual Year in Search report on Dec. 4, 2025.
“The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
The charges come as prediction markets face increasing scrutiny from regulators. The CFTC argues that event contracts traded on prediction markets constitute swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and are therefore subject to federal anti-fraud rules. The agency alleges Spagnuolo's conduct amounted to a scheme to misappropriate material nonpublic information in connection with those contracts.
The complaint alleges that cryptocurrency flowing through the AlphaRaccoon account was ultimately traced to an account opened in Spagnuolo's name using an Italian government identification card. Regulators also noted that the trader changed the account's handle after news reports raised questions about the unusually successful wagers.
“Today’s charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “The American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted.”
