Google engineer allegedly had a cheat code for Polymarket and turned it into $1.2M

Federal prosecutors have charged a Google software engineer in a case involving alleged insider-style trading on the blockchain prediction platform Polymarket. According to federal prosecutors, 36-year-old Michele Spagnuolo knew the results months before anyone else.

He was arrested on May 27, 2026. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York released a criminal complaint that charges him with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.

Google holds an annual “Year in Search” campaign, where it reveals the most-searched people, events, and topics, and people usually bet on the results before they come out.

What is Polymarket, and how does someone make money on it?

Polymarket is an online prediction market where people bet on the occurrence of real-world events. It uses a simple yes-or-no system in which each “YES” and each “NO” is priced between 0 and 1 dollar. The price changes depending on what other traders think the odds are. 

For example, if there is a 90% chance that Donald Trump will NOT be the top-searched person, then the “NO” share for Trump trades around 90 cents. That means if Trump is indeed not the top result, and you had bought that share, you would make 10 cents per share, as each share pays out a full dollar.

It is a guessing game for many traders because the system relies on assumptions, but Spagnuolo allegedly already knew the answer.

What is Google’s Year in Search, and why are the results hidden?

The “Year in Search” is a list of the people, events, topics, and questions that trended most on Google’s search engine during that year. The company has released the list since at least the early 2000s. 

According to the criminal complaint filed by FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz, the campaign has many benefits for Google. It drives millions of people to Google’s platforms and generates significant media coverage for the organization. 

It also reinforces Google’s status as the “authoritative barometer of public interest and cultural trends,” and gives Google a high-profile showcase to demonstrate its reach to advertisers.

Google keeps the results a secret, even to most of its employees. 

If the results leaked early, the media buzz would disappear, advertisers would lose interest in the launch moment, and the entire marketing campaign would be undercut. 

Google treats this information as highly confidential and restricts the data to a small number of employees. Spagnuolo has access to the data.

Which bets did Spagnuolo make?

Polymarket opened two markets for the 2025 Year in Search on October 14 and 20. The first market listed about 24 people and asked which of them would be the most-searched person on Google for 2025.

The second market asked whether those same people would be in the top five. The payout depended on the results that Google would publish on the Year in Search website.

Spagnuolo allegedly accessed Google’s internal Year in Search tool and used an anonymous account named AlphaRaccoon to place a $403 on Kendrick Lamar as the top-searched person.

The odds for that were 3%, and Google’s internal Year in Search tool already has Lamar’s name.

He also bet $10,807 that Pope Leo XIV would NOT be number one, just as the list indicated. The market gave Pope Leo XIV a 50/50 chance.

Spagnuolo checked the internal tool again on November 27 and saw that a musician named d4vd had replaced Kendrick Lamar as the number-one trending person for 2025.

He AlphaRaccoon bet $381.12 that d4vd would be in Google’s top 5, with a market outcome of only 18% because most traders had no idea who d4vd was in the first place. 

The Italian also bet $5 bet that d4vd would be the single top-searched person. The market assigned a near-zero probability to that outcome, so it was basically free money for him. 

But the biggest bets were $937,688 that Bianca Censori,  $613,587 that Pope Leo XIV, and $509,149 that Donald Trump would NOT be number one. 

He also added $171,612 that Donald Trump would NOT be in the top five. AlphaRaccoon risked about $2.75 million on about 25 outcome bets.

Google published the results on December 4, and d4vd, Kendrick Lamar, Jimmy Kimmel, Tyler Robinson, and Pope Leo XIV made the Global Top 5.

How did the FBI find Spagnuolo?

Spagnuolo tried to hide all traces of the money by converting his winnings into different cryptocurrencies and running them through a service designed to erase transaction history on the public blockchain. 

However, the FBI traced each address and found that the same wallet belonging to AlphaRaccoon was responsible for these transactions.

Here is what the US criminal complaint, Southern District of New York, stated in May 2026, “Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google’s confidential, commercially valuable internal data.”

How did Google respond?

A spokesperson at Google published a statement after Spagnuolo’s arrest and said, “We’re working with law enforcement on their investigation. 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. We’ve placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action.”

However, the statement contradicts the complaint. 

Google says the tool was available to all employees, but the criminal complaint states that Year in Search data is restricted “to only a limited number of employees” even within the company.

This is the second major insider-trading incident connected to Polymarket in 2026, which is putting serious pressure on the market regarding this kind of abuse. 

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