The Real Data Behind the Google Polymarket Insider | Matt Smith<br>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:
DOJ / CFTC · CHARGED 2026-05-27
Polymarket forensics
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 .
$0<br>Insider-lane profit
0%<br>Insider win rate (22 of 23)
$0<br>Staked on the answer key
“Most searched” markets
The same person, the same account
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.
With the answer key
Insider lane
23 “most-searched person / actor / show” markets — the exact rankings he could see internally.
0%
win rate · 22 of 23 markets won
Net profit$0
Return on stake0%
Total staked$0
Without it
Everything else
69 markets — crypto, sports, elections, geopolitics. His normal, edge-free trading.
0%
win rate · coin-flip territory
Net profit$0
Return on stake0%
Total staked$0
VS
Same trader, same risk appetite. The only variable is information . On Google’s unreleased rankings he won 22 of 23 bets; on everything public he was a net loser , including a −$276k hit on an Ethereum ETF market. The distance between those two records is the fingerprint of inside information.
Cumulative profit & loss
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.
Cumulative P&L<br>Insider-lane bet<br>Other bet
The 23 answer-key bets
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.
SORT<br>Profit & loss<br>Amount staked<br>Date placed
Methodology
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.
DOJ / CFTC stated stake~$2.75M
Reconstructed insider stake$2.73M
DOJ / CFTC stated profit~$1.2M
Reconstructed insider profit$1.20M
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...