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A Google engineer is said to have received early insight into internal data that showed that singer D4vd would surprisingly be the most searched person of 2025 on Google – and he is said to have used this highly confidential information to make money on the Polymarket platform. This is what US federal authorities claim.
Michele Spagnuolo bet not only that D4vd would win the title, but also that other prominent figures – including Kendrick Lamar, Donald Trump, Pope Leo XIV and Bianca Censori – would not claim it. That’s according to a federal lawsuit unsealed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York and shared with ROLLING STONE.
Authorities say Spagnuolo ended up netting more than $1.2 million on about two dozen trades he placed between Oct. 15 and Dec. 4 last year with a “near-perfect hit rate,” aided by his alleged access to the non-public numbers. Spagnuolo, who lives in Switzerland and traded on Polymarket under the name “AlphaRaccoon,” was charged Wednesday with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. At the same time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US federal agency that regulates futures markets, filed a civil lawsuit against him.
D4vd instead of Kendrick Lamar
According to the indictment, on November 27, Spagnuolo accessed Google’s confidential Year in Search 2025 data and learned that D4vd had replaced Kendrick Lamar as the most searched person of the year. About three hours later, he bet $381.12 that D4vd would finish in the top five, plus another $5 on first place, according to prosecutors. At that point, “the market gave D4vd a near zero percent chance of being the most searched person of the year on Google,” the indictment says.
Across multiple bets, Spagnuolo bet $937,688 on Censori not taking the top spot and $613,587 against Pope Leo
Before Google publicly announced its final rankings in early December, Pope Leo D4vd, real name David Burke, was in the headlines because of a sensational incident: In September, the badly decomposed remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez were found in the trunk of his towed Tesla – but he was still considered an extreme outsider, whose chances of the top spot had reportedly fallen to 0.2 percent at the end of November. (Burke has since been charged with murder.)
Greed-driven behavior
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Wednesday that Spagnuolo “breached his duties to his employer and misused Google’s confidential business information” – and will be held accountable for his “greed-driven conduct.”
“Michele Spagnuolo allegedly abused his privileged access to confidential trend data to place bets using nonpublic information, thereby reaping more than $1 million in ill-gotten gains,” FBI Assistant Director James C. Barnacle Jr. added in a statement. “The FBI is committed to tracking down fraudsters who betray their employers for personal financial gain.”
Spagnuolo, 36, was in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as of Thursday, according to prison records. Attempts to reach him by email were unsuccessful.
