A long-term Google engineer has been arrested and charged with federal crimes after allegedly leveraging confidential internal data to secure over $1.2 million in profits through the prediction platform Polymarket. Michele Spagnuolo, an Italian national residing in Switzerland, was taken into custody in New York following an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI. Authorities allege that Spagnuolo exploited his position as an information security specialist to gain an unfair advantage in betting markets.

Court documents reveal that Spagnuolo, who had been with Google for over a decade, allegedly utilized internal marketing data to place approximately $2.7 million in wagers between October and December of last year. The scheme centered on predicting the results of Google’s own search trends. Investigators claim that Spagnuolo used his access to pre-release search data to place highly accurate bets on which individuals would become the most-searched figures on the platform in 2025, including obscure predictions that yielded massive returns when the odds were heavily stacked against them.

Despite operating under the pseudonym ‘AlphaRaccoon’ and utilizing multiple cryptocurrency accounts, federal investigators were able to link the activity to Spagnuolo by tracing an account opened with his personal Italian identification card. The prediction platform Polymarket cooperated with authorities throughout the investigation, noting that the transparent nature of blockchain transactions made the illicit activity traceable.

In response to the allegations, Google confirmed that it is actively assisting law enforcement and has placed the engineer on leave. The company emphasized that while the tools used by the employee were accessible to staff for legitimate business purposes, utilizing such sensitive information for personal financial gain constitutes a severe violation of corporate policy. Spagnuolo has since been released on a $2.25 million bond as the legal proceedings continue.