On May 27, 2026, the Department of Justice charged a Google engineer, Michele Spagnuolo, with making more than $1.2 million on Polymarket as the user “AlphaRaccoon,” allegedly by trading on confidential Google data. The charge made headlines for a day and moved on.
The part worth a second look isn’t the charge. It’s that the entire alleged crime has been sitting in public the whole time, on-chain and fully reconstructable, for anyone who knows how to read it. Polymarket settles on Polygon, so every bet AlphaRaccoon placed — the price he paid, the day he placed it, what it eventually paid out — is permanently visible. So we pulled his complete trading record.
#What he actually knew
Every December, Google publishes its “Year in Search” — the rankings of the most-searched people, shows, and topics of the year. Polymarket runs prediction markets on the outcome: “Will [X] be the #1 searched person on Google this year?”
A Google engineer with internal access doesn’t have to guess. Weeks before the public reveal, he can see the real rankings: who actually topped the list. On those markets he wasn’t forecasting at all. He was trading with the answer key already in hand.
That’s the edge. He already knew the result everyone else was still trying to predict.
#The complete record
We reconstructed all 92 markets this one wallet ever traded, split into the ones where he allegedly held Google’s internal answer key versus everything else. Here’s every bet, the day he placed it, and what it made or lost:
The Real Data Behind Google's Polymarket Insider
A Google security engineer allegedly read the company’s confidential “Year in Search” rankings — the data showing who was really the most-searched person of 2025 — then bet on Polymarket before the public knew. On the bets he held the answer key for, he was superhuman. On everything else, he lost money.
The two-faced trader
Polymarket records every trade on-chain. Split this one wallet’s bets into the markets where he held Google’s internal answer key vs. everything else, and two completely different traders appear.
One vertical line called d4vd
Running P&L across all 92 markets in chronological order. The account drifts sideways and underwater for most of its life — then the Year-in-Search markets resolve in late 2025 and it vertical-launches. Gold dots are insider-lane bets. Hover the line.
Every insider-lane market
He bet NO on the obvious favorites (Trump, Pope Leo XIV, Bianca Censori as the #1 search) because the internal data showed the real #1 was the musician d4vd, whose searches had spiked on a criminal investigation that fall. He bet YES on d4vd at 3¢, and that single market turned ~$10.6k into ~$205k. Sort the cards below.
Found blind, then matched to the charges
How this wallet was identified
This account was surfaced from on-chain behavior alone — before any name was attached — by scanning Polymarket’s public trade ledger for the signature of an informational edge: tiny entry prices, an extreme win rate concentrated in one narrow market family, and conviction-sized stakes against the crowd. The Google “Year in Search” cluster lit up immediately.
Both figures reproduce the publicly stated charges to within ~1% straight from the chain — independent confirmation that this is the right wallet and the right set of bets. A key nuance: the whole account looks unremarkable (about +19% ROI overall). The insider signal only appears once you isolate the specific lane. That is the real lesson for spotting insiders — score the slice, not the wallet.
Research / educational. Built entirely from public on-chain Polymarket data and publicly reported charges. Identity per DOJ/CFTC public charging documents (2026-05-27). Allegations only; charges are not convictions.
#The tell
The number that gives it away isn’t the $1.2 million. It’s the gap between his two records, which the panels above lay side by side: 22 of 23 wins on the markets he had Google’s data for, and a losing record on the 69 markets where he was trading like everyone else. Same person, same account, same appetite for risk. The only thing that moved was whether he already knew the outcome.
Three bets show how the edge actually worked.
He put ~$10.6k on d4vd at 3¢ and walked away with roughly $205k, a 19× return. d4vd is an established musician, not an unknown; he topped 2025’s search rankings for a reason the betting public hadn’t priced in, a criminal investigation after a body was found in a car registered to him. The crowd’s money was on Trump and Pope Leo XIV. Spagnuolo’s internal data already had d4vd at #1, so he bet NO on those favorites at high prices and YES on the name nobody else saw coming.
His one miss in the lane was Kendrick Lamar (YES @ 6¢, −$11.9k). d4vd had quietly displaced Lamar at the top of the list, which is the exact swap the complaint says Spagnuolo saw in Google’s data on November 27.
#How we found the wallet
We didn’t start from his name. We started from the DOJ’s public facts: about $2.75M staked, roughly $1.2M profit, traded between October and December 2025 on markets tied to Google data. Then we searched the chain for a wallet that fit.
Ranking accounts by stake, redemption-aware profit, win rate, account age, and how concentrated they were in a single lane surfaced one match, live since May 2024:
0xee50a31c3f5a7c77824b12a941a54388a2827ed6
Its numbers land within about 1% of every figure the DOJ published. The catch is the one flagged in the methodology panel above: across all 92 markets the account looks ordinary, around +19% ROI. The edge only appears once you isolate the lane he had inside information on.
#The trail was always there
To prosecute, the DOJ needed Google’s internal records, the proof that Spagnuolo had access to the rankings and acted on them. The trades themselves needed no such access to read. The penny entry prices, the lopsided win rate in one narrow lane, the outsized stakes against the crowd sat in public on Polygon for months before any charge was filed. The forensics here didn’t crack a clever crime. They read an obvious one that nobody had opened yet.
Research / educational. Built entirely from public on-chain Polymarket data and the publicly reported DOJ/CFTC charges of 2026-05-27. Michele Spagnuolo has been charged, not convicted; all characterizations of intent are allegations per the filing.