Authorities arrested more than 5,800 alleged cybercriminals and seized $293 million in a global operation targeting social-engineering scams and money laundering across 97 countries, Interpol said Thursday.

The anti-fraud crackdown, dubbed Operation First Light, identified more than 142,000 victims, including people, businesses and governments, officials said. 

“Social engineering scams continue to pose a significant threat to our society. Criminal syndicates exploit human psychology to manipulate their targets, and no nation can stay safe unless all countries are equipped and committed to jointly fighting back,” Tomonobu Kaya, director of Interpol’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, said in a statement.

Police identified more than 15,500 cybercrime suspects during the operation, which spanned more than three months ending in late April, according to Interpol. Officials also analyzed more than 152,800 cases of cybercrime, including business email compromise, sextortion, romance scams, impersonation and investment schemes. 

Interpol said nearly 24,000 cases of cybercrime were solved and investigators blocked more than 31,000 bank accounts linked to malicious activity during the crackdown.

Authorities involved in the globally coordinated operation seized a high volume of devices and other equipment used to allegedly facilitate cybercrime. 

In Eswatini, police seized a replica of a Brazilian police station, including fake uniforms, signage and equipment that cybercriminals allegedly used to deceive targets into thinking they were victims of a crime, duping them into transferring funds.

While uncovering a romance scam money laundering operation in Thailand, investigators identified a 20-year-old suspect that allegedly processed more than $122.5 million in 10 months, according to Interpol. Officials in Palau identified and deported 22 people allegedly involved in a pair of scam centers operating from hotels.

“Interpol is dedicated to supporting member countries in building a comprehensive, coordinated strategy to tackle cyber-enabled financial crimes, organized criminal networks and the money laundering that fuels them,” Kaya said.

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A Google security engineer was arrested in New York and charged with crimes related to bets he allegedly placed on Polymarket using confidential information he pulled from Google systems, the Justice Department said Wednesday. 

Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, is accused of placing multiple trades on the prediction marketplace last year that netted him a profit of more than $1.2 million. He allegedly abused internal access to Google’s nonpublic Year in Search data and placed a series of bets on the most searched people on Google in 2025.

“Today’s charges reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential information to turn a profit in our markets,” Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement Wednesday. “Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted.”

Spagnuolo was charged with violating the Commodity Exchange Act, wire fraud and money laundering, which carry a combined maximum sentence up to 50 years in prison. 

He was also served with a civil complaint by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that accused him of insider trading. The government agency is seeking restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans and a permanent injunction against further regulation violations. 

Spagnuolo has been employed as a security engineer at Google since 2014, where he built products, specifications and led multiple projects in the information security unit, according to his company bio, which has since been taken down. 

A Google spokesperson said the company is working with law enforcement on its investigation. “The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We’ve placed the employee on leave and will take the appropriate action.”

Spagnuolo did not respond to a request for comment.

In a complaint unsealed Wednesday, a federal investigator said Spagnulo, who used the “AlphaRaccoon” user name on Polymarket, took deliberate steps to conceal his use of nonpublic information, including efforts to obscure the source and ownership of his proceeds. 

Prosecutors noted that Google’s internal software tool, which provided Spagnuolo access to search trends, bore a banner that stated “Google Confidential” in red text, adding that Spagnuolo confirmed he understood the company’s various confidentiality and ethics policies to access the data. 

Spagnuolo allegedly created his Polymarket account in May 2024 and placed a series of trades between later that year risking approximately $2.75 million on 25 outcomes that the market treated as unlikely.

The FBI said it traced Spagnuolo’s Polymarket account to a cryptocurrency wallet he allegedly used to fund the account and initiate multiple transfers. Spagnuolo is also accused of sending multiple transactions through a cryptocurrency swapping service that were received by an account in his name linked to his Italian government ID card. 

Spagnuolo allegedly changed his Polymarket username to an alphanumeric wallet address in early December, after Google released its Year in Search results and multiple users on Discord and X speculated the person between the account was a Google insider.

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