A Google engineer got an early look at insider data showing singer D4vd would be the surprise upset winner of Google’s “Most Searched” person of 2025 title, and he used the highly confidential information to cash in with Polymarket bets, federal authorities say.
Michele Spagnuolo not only bet that D4vd would win the title, he also placed wagers that other prominent figures, including Kendrick Lamar, Donald Trump, Pope Leo XIV, and Bianca Censori, would not claim the distinction, according to a federal complaint unsealed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York and obtained by Rolling Stone.
Authorities claim Spagnuolo ultimately pocketed more than $1.2 million from about two dozen trades placed between Oct. 15 and Dec. 4 of last year with “near-perfect accuracy” thanks to his alleged access to the nonpublic tallies. Spagnuolo, who lives in Switzerland and traded on the Polymarket platform using the name “AlphaRaccoon,” was charged Wednesday with commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. He was also simultaneously sued by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
According to the criminal complaint, Spagnuolo accessed Google’s confidential “Year in Search 2025” data on Nov. 27 and learned that D4vd had replaced Kendrick Lamar as the most searched person for the year. About three hours later, he bet $381.12 that D4vd would rank in the top five and $5 on D4vd ranking as the Number One most-searched, prosecutors say. At the time, “the market had assigned a near-zero probability to D4vd being ‘the #1 searched person on Google this year,” the complaint reads.
Across multiple bets, Spagnuolo wagered $937,688 that Censori would not be the most-searched, and $613,587 that Pope Leo XIV would not claim the top spot. In total, his AlphaRaccoon account risked approximately $2,754,092 on approximately 25 separate Google Year in Search 2025 outcomes that the market treated as unlikely, prosecutors say.
Before Google publicly announced its final rankings in early December, Pope Leo XIV was considered most likely to be the most Google-searched person of 2025, with 51.5 percent odds, followed by President Trump, with 9.5 percent odds, Decrypt reported last year. D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, had been in the news because the badly decomposed remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez were found in the front trunk of his towed Tesla in September, but he was still considered a massive longshot, with the likelihood of him topping the chart reportedly dropping down to 0.2 percent by the end of November. (Burke has since been charged with murder.)
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Wednesday that Spagnuolo “violated the duties he owed to his employer and used Google’s confidential business” and that he would be held accountable for his “greed-driven conduct.”
“Michele Spagnuolo allegedly abused his elevated access to confidential trends to place bets with nonpublic information and receive more than one million dollars in unlawful profits,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. added in a statement. “The FBI remains dedicated to searching for fraudsters who betray their employer for personal financial gains.”
Spagnuolo, 36, was listed as being in custody at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center on Thursday. Attempts to reach him by email were not successful.
