Google Employee Charged With Using Inside Information to Bet on Search Trends

A federal criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in New York charges a Google software engineer with using nonpublic company data to place bets on Polymarket, a prediction market platform. The complaint states the employee accessed internal records tracking user searches and placed wagers on the outcome of Google's Year in Search 2025 results.

Prosecutors allege the bets generated more than $1 million in profits. The employee is charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Authorities say the individual used an account under the name AlphaRaccoon to bet that singer D4vd would be Google's most-searched person for 2025.

The employee, an Italian citizen, was arrested Wednesday morning in New York and appeared before a federal magistrate judge. He did not enter a plea and was released on a $2.25 million bond that includes $1 million in cash, of which $50,000 must be posted Wednesday.

The complaint says the employee took steps to conceal the source of the proceeds after the bets paid out. Google publicly released its Year in Search 2025 results on Dec. 4, 2025.

This marks the second case involving prediction markets brought this year by the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Last month a U.S. special forces soldier pleaded not guilty to charges of making fraudulent bets on Polymarket about a military raid in Venezuela.