Federal prosecutors in the United States have charged Michele Spagnuolo, a principal software engineer at Alphabet, with fraud and money laundering. He is accused of using non-public information to place bets on Polymarket regarding Alphabet's projected top search results for 2025.
The charges allege that Spagnuolo, operating under the account name "AlphaRacoon," profited approximately $1.2 million. He reportedly made accurate wagers predicting that the recently arrested singer D4vd would be the top trending search, while correctly betting that Bianca Censori, Pope Leo, and former President Donald Trump would not hold that position.
According to the indictment, Spagnuolo accessed confidential annual search data using internal Alphabet software tools. Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of the Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
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