{"id":699513,"date":"2026-05-28T14:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/699513\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:40:10","slug":"d4vd-google-employee-charged-with-fraud-over-1-million-bet-on-alleged-murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/699513\/","title":{"rendered":"D4VD: Google Employee Charged with Fraud over $1 Million Bet on Alleged Murderer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                          D4VD<br \/>\n                          Google Employee Arrested After Winning $1M Bet on Alleged Murderer<\/p>\n<p>\n                                                                        Published<br \/>\n                              May 28, 2026<br \/>\n                            5:54 AM PDT<br \/>\n                                                                      |<br \/>\n                                                                Updated<br \/>\n                                  May 28, 2026<br \/>\n                                7:36 AM PDT\n                                    <\/p>\n<p>                  <a class=\"js-click-image js-track-link image-lightbox-preview\" data-node-ref=\"tmz:image-asset:image_jpg_20260528_a7b73b64c30b4264977fc60425cab8a1\" data-container-ref=\"tmz:article:44c290e5-5a15-4ec2-af07-8fc5d7685895\" data-context=\"{&quot;section&quot;:&quot;permalink&quot;,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;image&quot;}\"><\/p>\n<p>                          <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a7b73b64c30b4264977fc60425cab8a1_md.jpg\" alt=\"d4vd google getty 1\" width=\"728\" height=\"546\" class=\"img-fluid image-block__img-fluid img-aspect-auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  <\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Google employee was arrested and charged with fraud after he used inside information from the company to place bets involving alleged murderer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/people\/d4vd\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">D4vd<\/a> &#8230; which won him a fat $1.2 million payout.<\/p>\n<p>A federal criminal complaint unsealed in New York Wednesday claims Michele Spagnuolo, an Italian citizen and Google software engineer, used his access to confidential company data tracking user searches to place several Google-related bets on the prediction platform, Polymarket.<\/p>\n<p>His alleged bets relating to singer D4vd show Spagnuolo used his &#8220;AlphaRaccoon&#8221; Polymarket account to vote &#8220;yes&#8221; for D4vd being ranked in &#8220;Google\u2019s Top 5 Most Searched People of 2025&#8221; as well as in the &#8220;Will d4vd be the #1 searched person on Google this year&#8221; poll.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"continued\" class=\"continued-anchor\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  <a class=\"js-click-image js-track-link image-lightbox-preview\" data-node-ref=\"tmz:image-asset:image_jpg_20260528_35a37a66e3ce414986fedebef4fdd527\" data-container-ref=\"tmz:article:44c290e5-5a15-4ec2-af07-8fc5d7685895\" data-context=\"{&quot;section&quot;:&quot;permalink&quot;,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;image&quot;}\"><\/p>\n<p>                          <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/35a37a66e3ce414986fedebef4fdd527_md.jpg\" alt=\"kendrick lamar and d4vd getty 1\" width=\"728\" height=\"546\" class=\"img-fluid image-block__img-fluid img-aspect-auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Polymarket&#8217;s prediction mechanism had &#8220;assigned a near-zero probability&#8221; for the latter option &#8230; but by then, the government says Google\u2019s internal Year in Search data reflected that D4vd had replaced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/people\/kendrick-lamar\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kendrick Lamar<\/a> as Google&#8217;s most searched person for 2025. Spagnuolo saw this information and used it to wager less than $1,000, but walked away with $1.2 million on his Google Year in Search 2025-related bets, per federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p>They say Spagnuolo then &#8220;took deliberate steps to conceal his unlawful use of nonpublic information by attempting to obscure the source and ownership of his unlawful proceeds.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Spagnuolo was arrested on Wednesday and charged with money laundering, commodities fraud, and wire fraud. He appeared before a federal magistrate judge, during which he did not enter a plea. He was released on a $2.25 million bond.<\/p>\n<p>As you know, D4vd remains behind bars for allegedly murdering 14-year-old\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/people\/celeste-rivas\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Celeste Rivas Hernandez<\/a> in April 2025. He has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/2026\/04\/20\/d4vd-pleads-not-guilty-celeste-rivas-murder\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pleaded not guilty<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"D4VD Google Employee Arrested After Winning $1M Bet on Alleged Murderer Published May 28, 2026 5:54 AM PDT&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-699513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}