D4vd Murder Bet: How a Google Engineer Used Secret Search Data to Make $1.2M on Singer's Grim Fame

A Google engineer has been charged in New York after prosecutors alleged he used confidential search data to make more than £890,000 ($1.2 million) on Polymarket, betting on the grim rise of singer D4vd's name after he was drawn into a murder investigation.

Michele Spagnuolo, 36, is accused of turning internal Google information into a private windfall, with the US Justice Department saying the trades were placed between October and December and exposed in documents unsealed this week.

How The D4vd Murder Case Became A Lucrative 'Long Shot'

The most eye‑catching allegation centres on a little‑known musician, D4vd, who later became a suspect in the death of 14‑year‑old Celeste Rivas Hernandez and has since been charged with her murder.

According to the US Justice Department complaint, Polymarket traders had assigned a 'near‑zero probability' that D4vd would end up as Google's most‑searched person in 2025.

Spagnuolo, prosecutors say, knew better.

Armed with internal Google statistics that already showed D4vd surging to the top of the rankings, he allegedly bet heavily that the singer would finish the year at number one.

When Google's figures were publicly confirmed on 4 December, the wager paid out, delivering a huge profit to the Polymarket account that investigators say Spagnuolo controlled under the pseudonym 'AlphaRacoon.'

The complaint goes further, accusing him of then taking 'deliberate steps to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information' by attempting to obscure the source and ownership of his cryptocurrency winnings across several accounts.

Google Insider Trading: A 'Greed‑Driven' Use Of Confidential Data

This is not a messy office sweepstake gone wrong. Spagnuolo has been charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering in the Southern District of New York, and faces the full weight of a financial crime prosecution.

'Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed‑driven conduct investigated and prosecuted,' US Attorney Jay Clayton said, arguing that the case sends a 'decades‑old message' that corporate insiders cannot monetise confidential information for personal gain.

Compared to a traditional stock tip passed over dinner, the alleged edge here was Google's own non‑public search analytics. Prosecutors say that while other Polymarket users were trading on public headlines, rumours and gut instinct, Spagnuolo was quietly consulting data that showed who was actually being searched, and at what volume.

'Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data,' the complaint states.

There is no suggestion in the filings that Google as a company benefitted from the trades. A Google spokesperson said the firm is cooperating with law enforcement and confirmed that Spagnuolo has been placed on leave.

'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.

Prediction Markets, Crypto And A Traceable 'AlphaRacoon'

Polymarket has marketed itself as a kind of hive mind for future events, allowing users to buy and sell outcome‑based tokens on everything from elections to celebrity scandals. It only accepts cryptocurrency, and its prices are supposed to reflect the crowd's best guess of what will happen.

That model frays quickly if someone in the crowd is secretly holding the answer sheet.

Court documents say that between October and December, Spagnuolo wagered roughly £2 million ($2.7 million) in total on Google‑related markets, making just over £740,000 ($1 million) in profit.

Alongside his winning D4vd bet, prosecutors say he placed trades on who would not be the most‑searched person, allegedly shorting names such as Bianca Censori and President Donald Trump while internal Google data showed they were unlikely to top the list.

On Polymarket, he allegedly traded under the handle 'AlphaRacoon' and routed funds through multiple crypto wallets. The FBI says it was still able to link the accounts back to him, in part by tracing one registration that used an Italian identification card in his own name.

Polymarket, keen to show it is not a safe harbour for cheats, has stressed its cooperation with investigators. A spokesperson said the platform 'worked closely' with authorities and described blockchain trading as 'transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints.'

The company has also claimed a kind of dubious first, saying it is the only prediction platform so far whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States.

D4vd Murder Bet Puts Spotlight On A New Kind Of Market Abuse

The D4vd murder case is gruesome enough on its own terms. The idea that someone inside one of the world's largest tech companies allegedly looked at that tragedy and saw an arbitrage opportunity on an obscure betting site adds another layer of discomfort.

By tying the D4vd wager to internal Google search trends, prosecutors are effectively arguing that the engineer monetised the public's morbid curiosity around a killing he had no connection to, in a market where everyone else believed his chosen outcome was highly unlikely. The complaint does not allege he had any role in the crime itself, only that he used Google data about interest in it.

If the charges are proved, it would be a textbook case of information asymmetry in the age of big data. Search logs, recommendation systems and user metrics have become some of the most commercially sensitive assets in tech. Spagnuolo's case shows how, in the wrong hands, those numbers can be quietly repurposed into gambling chips.

It also underlines how prediction markets, which their backers defend as tools for price discovery and collective intelligence, can start to look a lot like regulated financial exchanges the moment insiders arrive.

This is already the second high‑profile US prosecution linked to Polymarket, after a Special Forces soldier was accused in April of using classified information about a military raid in Venezuela to trade there.

Spagnuolo has not responded to requests for comment and has not yet entered a plea in the criminal case. He has been released on a £1.67 million ($2.25 million) bond, according to US media reports.

US prosecutors say the Italian software specialist, Michele Spagnuolo, who lives in Switzerland, used his access to internal Google marketing material between October and December last year to place a string of bets on Polymarket that the public had no realistic way to price.

Court documents allege those wagers were tied to Google's annual lists of the most‑searched people and topics, which are compiled from user behaviour but kept strictly in‑house until Google makes them public.