Last fall, 20-year-old alt-pop singer d4vd (David Anthony Burke) made headlines when body identified as 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found in a Tesla registered to the singer. Despite unending public speculation surrounding the crime, it was not until April 2026 that d4vd was officially arrested and charged with first degree murder. Now, Stereogum reports that a Google software engineer has been charged with insider trading after allegedly using confidential company information to make over $1.2 million on gambling site Polymarket by successfully betting that d4vd would be Google’s most-searched person of 2025.
Michele Spagnulo, a 36-year-old Italian citizen living in Switzerland, has been charged with one count of commodities fraud, and one count of money laundering. He allegedly used internal Google search data that tracked user searches which he then used to place a series of bets from October to December under the username AlphaRacoon. At the time, the prediction market claimed a near-zero probability of d4vd being the top-searched person on Google, which allowed Spagnulo to capitalize on his insider knowledge of the outcomes to make a lot of money on long odds. The complaint explains that Spagnulo took “deliberate steps to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information by attempting to obscure the source and ownership of his unlawful proceed.”
A spokesperson for Google clarified that Spagnulo has since been placed on leave, explaining that while the tool Spagnulo used to view Google’s marketing material is available to all employees, using that confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of Google’s policies.
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