Conspiracy theory here: if you go to a big player like GoDaddy they'll sell their queries and some party will see the domain you want and squat it unless you register right away. Just use the whois command in your terminal.
It’s not a particularly difficult or clever test to run, so I’m definitely not the first person to come up with it. It’s the kind of thing that’s big news if true but a non-story if false. The fact that no one has found it to be true suggests to me that it’s not happening.