Google employee charged with fraud after D4vd search bet won $1M on Polymarket

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]You're looking at a smiling 36-year-old Michelle Spanuolo, a Google software engineer charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering for what he is accused of doing on a site called Polymarket. Here's Wake Forest Professor of Economics Coleman Stroup.

[00:00:16]>> And one of the um key points about that site is that the trades are all public. So, we didn't know who the person was exactly, but we knew that there was somebody that seemingly was doing something that seemed um a little bit unusual. I'll just say that.

[00:00:33]>> Polymarket is a cryptocurrency-based platform where people can buy and sell shares, basically betting on the outcomes of real-world events. Federal prosecutors say that Spanuolo used the username Alpha Racoon and bet that Google's most searched person in 2025 would be the singer known as David. At the time, there was a near zero probability to David being the number one searched person on Google. Turned out David, who has since pled not guilty in the murder of a 14-year-old, did in fact end up topping the list. Dan Ives is the head of tech research at Wedbush Securities.

[00:01:11]>> Where we're talking ultimately, you know, billions of dollars that that that are bet on the prediction markets. This is going to become more and more of an issue. I mean, you know, and and I think it's not stopping especially as more and more dollars get bet on the platform.

[00:01:27]>> Stroup, though, says he believes Polymarket regulators and traders are much more aware of these concerns than even three, four, or five months ago.

[00:01:37]>> This would be like looking at the stock market in the early 20th century before, you know, we had the Securities and Exchange Commission. A lot of not-so-great things were happening in the markets. We're kind of more working on an accelerated cycle here, but I think things are cleaning up, but I still imagine this won't be the last case that we see.

[00:01:55]>> A Google spokesperson says they have placed the employee on leave and will take appropriate action. J.R. Stone, ABC 7 Eyewitness News.