| Google Engineer Peeked
at Year in Search Then Monetized
Inside Info on Polymarket So SDNY
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
SDNY
COURTHOUSE,
May 27 – On May 27 DOJ
announced "the unsealing of a
complaint charging MICHELE
SPAGNUOLO, a/k/a
'AlphaRaccoon,; a software
engineer at Google, 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
platform, as in another recent
SDNY case, was Polymarket. The
Complaint says,
"SPAGNUOLO’s
AlphaRaccoon account wagered:
approximately $937,688 on the
“NO” side of “Will Bianca
Censori be the #1 searched
person on Google this year?”
at average implied probability
of approximately 85%;
approximately $613,587 on the
“NO” side of “Will Pope Leo
XIV be the #1 searched person
on Google this year?” at
average implied probability of
approximately 56%;
approximately $509,149 on the
“NO” side of “Will Donald
Trump be the #1 searched
person on Google this year?”
at average implied probability
of approximately 90%; and
approximately $171,612 on the
“NO” side of “Will Donald
Trump rank in Google’s Top 5
Most Searched People of 2025?”
at average implied probability
of approximately 66%.
In total, from on
or about October 15, 2025,
through on or about 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 as
unlikely.
Google officially
and publicly announced its
Year in Search 2025 results on
or about December 4, 2025.
Soon after it did so,
SPAGNUOLO’s AlphaRaccoon
account, profited
approximately $1.2 million on
his Google Year in Search
2025-related bets.
The case
is USA v. Spagnuolo,
1:26-mj-2020
(Netburn)
***
Your
support means a lot. As little as $5 a month
helps keep us going and grants you access to
exclusive bonus material on our Patreon
page. Click
here to become a patron.
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
Mail: Box 130222, Chinatown Station,
NY NY 10013
Other, earlier Inner City Press are
listed here,
and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2026 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com
|
,
