Despite admitting he'd avoided paying taxes because they were "illegal", McAfee remained defiant, saying in his final tweet on June 18: "In a democracy, power is given not taken. But it is still power. Love, compassion, caring have no use for it. But it is fuel for greed, hostility, jealousy... All power corrupts. Take care which powers you allow a democracy to wield."

McAfee, whose father also died by suicide when he was 15, is survived by his wife, Janice McAfee.

4

McAfee claims he recorded options the Belizean government were considering to get rid of him, including sniper attack and planting explosives in his car

4

John McAfee created antivirus software and made millions after his early success

 'KING OF THE JUNGLE' 

Who was John McAfee and what was his net worth

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3216144/john-mcafee-antivirus-software-dead-prison/

Katrina Schollenberger, SEO Reporter - 23 Jun 2021

ANTI-VIRUS pioneer John McAfee made millions from cyber-security software – but was charged in March 2021 over a $13million cryptocurrency "scam" after allegedly luring victims on Twitter..

In June 2021, three months after the tech entrepreneur was charged, he allegedly committed suicide.

Who is John McAfee?

John McAfee was born in 1945 on a US Army base in Britain, before being raised in Virginia.

After working as a programmer and software designer for several companies, including NASA, he began to develop software to combat viruses.

In 1987 he founded McAfee Associates, a computer antivirus company.

Eventually Intel bought McAfee and changed the name of the branding - something McAfee expressed pleasure over.

In August 2009, The New York Times reported that his personal fortune had fallen to $400million from $100million.

He moved to Belize and wanted to find medicinal uses for plants on his land.

At the DEF CON conference in LA in August 2014 he warned Americans not to use smartphones - suggesting apps are used to spy on clueless customers who do not read privacy agreements.

He announced he would seek the office of President of the United States in the 2016 Presidential campaign as a candidate of the Libertarian Party. He lost the Libertarian Party's nomination to Gary Johnson.

In May 2016 he was appointed chief executive chairman and CEO of MGT Capital Investments, later announcing that it would be renamed John McAfee Global Technologies.

He then claimed he and his team had exploited a flaw in the Android operating system that allowed him to read encrypted messages from Whatsapp.

Was McAfee charged?

In March 2021, McAfee and his bodyguard Jimmy Gale Watson Jr were charged for a scheme to exploit McAfee's large Twitter following by publicly touting cryptocurrency offerings and digital tokens that they later sold once prices rose on the promotions, according to the US Department of Justice and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Manhattan US Attorney Audrey Strauss said that McAfee, 75, Watson, 40, and other members of the "cryptocurrency team" allegedly gained more than $13million from investors "they victimized with their fraudulent schemes."

McAfee is being detained in Spain on separate criminal charges filed by the Justice Department's tax division, the department said.

Watson, an executive adviser of McAfee's so-called cryptocurrency team, was arrested on Thursday night, the Justice Department said.

Strauss said: "As alleged, McAfee and Watson exploited a widely used social media platform and enthusiasm among investors in the emerging cryptocurrency market to make millions through lies and deception."

He added: "The defendants allegedly used McAfee’s Twitter account to publish messages to hundreds of thousands of his Twitter followers touting various cryptocurrencies through false and misleading statements to conceal their true, self-interested motives."

How did McAfee die?

McAfee reportedly killed himself after he was set to be extradited to the United States.

The 75-year-old tech mogul took his own life in a prison in Barcelona, according to local paper El Pais.

His death was reported just hours after Spain’s National Court approved his extradition to the US, where he is wanted on tax-related criminal charges that carried a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

Why did he move to Belize?

McAfee said he moved to the country in 2008 thinking he would "retire and fish, scuba dive, sail and otherwise enjoy my declining years".

He was 63 at the time, but said he only remained retired for a few months.

The 75-year-old lived on the North Island of San Pedro, where roads were impassable and the main mode of transport was the ferry service.

Although it was meant to be an escape from business, he ended up starting a new one within a few months of moving there.

What does McAfee say happened in Belize?

He alleges in 2011 he caught wind of a government plot to kill him.

McAfee claims he recorded options the government was considering to get rid of him, including sniper attack and planting explosives in his car.

In response to this he increased his security and carried on verbally attacking the government.

In May of that year he said his jungle compound was stormed by 42 paramilitary soldiers, who shot his dog, destroyed property and arrested him on charges that were later dropped.

Then in 2012 his neighbour was murdered - with McAfee saying that he believed he was the target but the assassins entered the wrong house.

He went underground, which sparked a dramatic manhunt before he was eventually being arrested in Guatemala and deported back to the US in December 2012.

Belize cops still insist he was a "person of interest" in his neighbour's death, but he denies any involvement and accuses local authorities of corruption.

Did Johnny Depp play McAfee in a film?

In March 2017 it was reported that Johnny Depp would be portraying McAfee in a film titled King of the Jungle.

However, Variety reported that Michael Keaton will play McAfee in the film. Depp was first attached to the project.

The darkly comic biopic was reportedly to centre around McAfee taking a Wired magazine reporter on a tour of his Belize compound.

However, news on the movie went quiet, with no release date or filming information emerging since the initial reports.

John McAfee: Anti-virus creator found dead in a Spanish prison cell

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57589822

Anti-virus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been found dead in a Barcelona prison cell hours after a Spanish court agreed to extradite him to the US to face tax evasion charges.

The Catalan justice department said medics had tried to resuscitate the 75-year-old, but were not successful.

It added that "everything indicates" McAfee had taken his own life.

A controversial figure in the tech world, his company released the first commercial anti-virus software.

McAfee VirusScan helped to spark a multi-billion dollar industry in the computer world, and was eventually sold to technology giant Intel for more than $7.6bn (£4.7bn).

In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain when he was about to board a plane to Turkey, and accused of failing to file tax returns for four years, despite earning millions from consulting work, speaking engagements, crypto-currencies and selling the rights to his life story.

The US justice department alleged that McAfee evaded tax liability by having his income paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees.

He was also accused of concealing assets, including a yacht and real estate property, also in other people's names.

Spain's National Court authorised his extradition to the US to face the charges on Wednesday morning.

In recent years, McAfee had repeatedly claimed that there was a plot to get him - however the court said there was "no revealing evidence" that he was being prosecuted for political or ideological reasons, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.

He had argued in a hearing earlier this month that the charges against him were politically motivated and that he would spend the rest of his life in prison if returned to the US.

But Nishay Sanan, McAfee's lawyer, said he had intended to fight all the charges.

"This is again the US government trying to erase John McAfee," Mr Sanan told NPR on Wednesday. "This man was a fighter. And in the minds of everyone who knew him, he will always be a fighter."

The entrepreneur, who was born in Gloucestershire, England first came to prominence in the 1980s when he founded his tech company and released McAfee VirusScan.

Although a pioneer of computer security, he once admitted to the BBC that he never actually used the software on his own computers - or any anti-virus software for that matter.

"I protect myself by constantly changing my IP [internet protocol] address, by not attaching my name to any device I use, and by not going on to sites where you might pick up a virus," he told the BBC's technology reporter Leo Kelion in 2013.

"Porn sites, for example, I just don't go there."

McAfee never fitted into the mould of what a tech entrepreneur might look like. He was brash, reckless and never far away from the next scandal.

McAfee himself is best known for the company he founded and named.

It was wildly successful and made him a rich man. He also helped to create a multi-billon-dollar computer security software industry in the process.

McAfee was a visionary, but also hot headed. It was his temperament that got him into trouble throughout his life.

In 2012 he was arrested in Guatemala, having been on the run in Belize where police were investigating the death of his neighbour.

He always denied any involvement in the murder.

A prominent libertarian, engaging speaker and crypto enthusiast, McAfee still had the ability to make money. His latest brush with law enforcement was due to alleged tax evasion on his recent earnings.

He will be remembered, rightly, as an important figure in the development of the technology scene of the 1980s and 1990s. But he will also be remembered as a deeply controversial figure, who at times seemed intent in taking a path in life that might lead to trouble.

 

John McAfee: Addict, coder, runaway

By Leo Kelion Technology reporter Published11 October 2013

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24441931

 

Who is the real John McAfee? He's the man who went on the run after his neighbour was found dead, face-up, with a bullet in his head. He's the man who jump-started the multibillion-dollar anti-virus industry. And now he thinks he can make you invisible on the internet.

Within tech circles he's long been a legend. But for most people, McAfee came to prominence last year when he fled his Central American home - teeth stained, hair dyed, in disguise - rather than let himself be questioned by authorities he accused of being corrupt.

He tells the BBC he had "no connection whatsoever" with his neighbour's death. Police say he remains a "person of interest".

Back in the US, after posting footage of young female "friends" stroking his naked tattooed torso, he now plans to neutralise the NSA's cyber-surveillance system.

It might suggest a crazed, perhaps even deranged, personality. One journalist who has interviewed McAfee many times described him a "master manipulator" who lies and deceives.

"I've been called paranoid, schizophrenic, the wild child of Silicon Valley," McAfee acknowledges.

 

But he has a different perspective: "I'm an entrepreneur. I always have been. I am curious and I enjoy solving problems.

"I think that it's when we step out of the road, step outside the box, become our own person and we walk fearlessly down paths other people wouldn't look at, that true progress comes. And sometimes true beauty as well.

"We're missing that. We're missing the people who have the courage to walk into the wilderness just to see what's there."

This is how Amy Emshwiller, the teenage ex-prostitute he lived with in Belize, describes him: "He's sweet, generous. He likes to like adventures. He's serious and usually he has a dark sense of humour. He's generally a sweet guy. He just doesn't like to be [expletive] with."

So, who is the real John McAfee?

To have any chance of knowing and gaining an informed opinion of what really motivated his erratic-sounding behaviour after the killing of Gregory Faull, you must travel deep into the 68-year-old's past.

 

Addicted and expelled

Despite his Southern accent, the bleached-blond and goateed businessman is in fact half-British - the son of an Englishwoman who met an American soldier stationed in the UK during World War II.

"I feel as much British as I do American," McAfee says. "There's not much difference between our countries."

They moved to Virginia when he was young, where he had a troubled childhood. His father was an abusive alcoholic who, when McAfee was aged 15, shot himself dead. In the following years, McAfee says, he too began drinking heavily and taking drugs, but still managed to maintain a promising academic career.

That came to an end in the late 1960s when Northeast State Louisiana State College terminated his PhD in mathematics after it was revealed that he had slept with an undergraduate he was mentoring.

They later married and McAfee turned his skills to a series of programming jobs with some of the biggest tech organisations of the time including Nasa, General Electric, Siemens, Univac and Xerox, all the while continuing to indulge in his addictions.