Michele Spagnuolo has been charged with 3 crimes for allegedly insider trading on Polymarket on markets related to Google.

Resolution criteria

This market will resolve to YES if Michele Spagnuolo is criminally convicted of any charge (including commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, or any other superseding or related criminal charges) related to the Department of Justice's (DOJ) prosecution of his alleged prediction market insider trading.

A conviction is defined as a guilty verdict at trial, a guilty plea, or a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) that is accepted by the court.

This market will resolve to NO if:

• Spagnuolo is acquitted of all related criminal charges at trial.

• All criminal charges against him are dismissed with prejudice.

• The criminal case is resolved via a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) or deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) without a formal conviction.

Civil lawsuits—such as the parallel civil action filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—or civil settlements will not count as a conviction.

If convicted after trial, this only resolves after an appeal is ruled upon, or the deadline to file an appeal is over. If an appeals court reverses all counts of conviction, and he is not being retried, this resolves NO. If he is retried, this will not resolve until final resolution of the charges.

Only a conviction on a single charge is required.

The primary source of truth will be official federal court dockets for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), accessible via PACER, or major reputable news outlets reporting on the case.

Background

On May 27, 2026, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unsealed a criminal complaint charging 36-year-old Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo (allegedly trading under the alias "AlphaRaccoon") with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Authorities allege Spagnuolo used his employee access to Google's confidential internal search trend data to place highly accurate, lucrative bets on prediction platforms like Polymarket—specifically wagering on the platform's "Year in Search" contracts for 2025. This scheme allegedly generated over $1.2 million in illicit profits.

In addition to the criminal charges, the CFTC has filed a parallel civil enforcement action against Spagnuolo seeking fines and permanent trading bans.