Tech entrepreneur John McAfee was found dead on Wednesday in a prison cell near Barcelona hours after a Spanish court approved his extradition to the U.S. on tax evasion charges, according to a report.
The news of McAfee's death was first reported by Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
McAfee, 75, said at an extradition hearing earlier this month that the charges against him were politically motivated. He ran for U.S. president as a Libertarian candidate in 2016, coming in third in the party’s primary.
McAfee was arrested at Barcelona’s airport on Oct. 7, two days after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with evading taxes and failing to file tax returns.
The Department of Justice alleged McAfee made over $23 million due to materially false and misleading statements about cryptocurrencies.
McAfee was charged in March by the Southern District of New York with fraud and money laundering conspiracy crimes related to two cryptocurrency schemes that netted his team $13 million.
McAfee, who founded McAfee antivirus software, was worth over $100 million before the value of his investments plunged during the 2008 financial crisis.
After selling his company, he retired to Belize and said in 2011 he uncovered a government plot to kill him. He fled to Guatemala in November 2012 after he was named a person of interest in the death of his neighbor.
McAfee was returned to the U.S. after a lengthy legal battle and lived in Tennessee until 2019 when he said he was fleeing from the U.S. government. He said taxes were illegal and that he hadn't paid his taxes in eight years.
"In a democracy, power is given not taken," McAfee said in his last tweet on June 18. "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."
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them." - John Wayne in "The Shootist"
June 23, 2021, 04:15 PM
parabellum
"He was murdered"
That's what you're going to hear for the next six months.
June 23, 2021, 04:24 PM
darthfuster
McAfee didn’t kill himself? Lol
You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier
June 23, 2021, 04:29 PM
RichardC
Conspiracy theories will go viral.
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June 23, 2021, 04:29 PM
cas
Sounds like the cheese may have slipped off his cracker just a bit.
_____________________________________________________ Sliced bread, the greatest thing since the 1911.
June 23, 2021, 04:43 PM
cslinger
quote:
Originally posted by cas: Sounds like the cheese may have slipped off his cracker just a bit.
IIRC hadn’t he been just this side of batshit crazy for some time??
Take Care, Shoot Safe, Chris
June 23, 2021, 04:54 PM
ensigmatic
quote:
Originally posted by cslinger:
quote:
Originally posted by cas: Sounds like the cheese may have slipped off his cracker just a bit.
IIRC hadn’t he been just this side of batshit crazy for some time??
I think "just this side of" would depend upon which side of the line you stood
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher
June 23, 2021, 04:56 PM
parabellum
He went from nuts, to nuts with a side of nuts, but, mark my word- this will be characterized as some kind of vast conspiracy.
June 23, 2021, 05:09 PM
mbinky
Oh he was colorful, that's for sure. Sure did live one hell of a life. I think he knew it was the end of the line. He was getting extradited to the US and that would be it. Us prison would be worse than Spanish prison for him.
The Libertarian Trump?
He was born in Wales to an American serviceman and a British nurse. The family settled in Roanoke, where his violently alcoholic father, who routinely roughed up McAfee and his mom, eventually shot himself when McAfee was 15. "I felt unfathomable relief," he told me one night over drinks. "It ended that man. It freed this one."
In college, McAfee himself started heavily sousing. He pursued a Ph.D. in mathematics at Northeast Louisiana State before getting bounced for sleeping with one of his undergrad students, whom he later married, then divorced. A job coding punchcards for UNIVAC in Tennessee ended when he was arrested for buying marijuana.
He had a blur of other stints: programmer for NASA's Institute for Space Studies, consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, selling drugs and jewelry out of a van in Mexico. After developing a bottle-of-scotch-a-day and cocaine habit, he hit bottom, went to AA, and swears he's never taken drugs again. When I witnessed a delegate pass a joint his way on one of his frequent cigarette breaks by the hotel pool, McAfee didn't seem remotely interested. He'd sworn off drinking for a time, too, something he's made a great display of over the years to profilers. Yet he seemed to match me tequila (his) for bourbon (mine) whenever we hit the bar. When did he fall off the wagon? About two years ago, he says. "Why?" I asked him. "I was 68 years old," he says. Figuring his biblically allotted threescore-and-ten were just about up, he decided "I want a drink."
In the late '80s, while working at Lockheed Martin, McAfee encountered "the Pakistani Brain," one of the first computer viruses. He built a program to destroy it—Virus-Scan. And he further innovated in how he distributed it—giving it away on electronic bulletin boards while building a subscriber base for updates and technical support. This gave rise to his namesake company, which a bored McAfee cashed out of in the mid-'90s, perhaps a tad early (he made $100 million, though Intel later bought the company for $7.6 billion). That's when things really got weird. McAfee became a peripatetic thrill-seeker/jack-of-all-trades. He'd take jet-skiing trips across hundreds of miles of open ocean. He ran a yoga ashram in the Rockies, writing four yoga books along the way. "All yoga books are garbage," he now tells me. "I don't believe that spirituality can be taught from the outside. You've just gotta look in the mirror."
If he's dead, why do I keep getting emails from McAfee about my nonexistent service that has expired?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Yidn, shreibt un fershreibt"
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind." -Bomber Harris
June 23, 2021, 05:15 PM
ensigmatic
quote:
Originally posted by kz1000: If he's dead, why do I keep getting emails from McAfee about my nonexistent service that has expired?
Probably meant tongue-in-cheek, but John McAfee hasn't been involved in McAfee security products for... geez... a decade or more? Two? Quite a long time.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher
June 23, 2021, 05:17 PM
jbcummings
I think it was in 2019 I saw him interviewed on Fox Business. It might have been Varney, I’m not sure right now, but I do remember the guy interviewing him had a puzzled look on his face with a side of “WHO set THIS up?”. Confusion and nutz springs to mind.
———- Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for thou art crunchy and taste good with catsup.
June 23, 2021, 05:23 PM
Edmond
Maybe if he used Norton it would've saved him...
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June 23, 2021, 05:28 PM
tatortodd
quote:
Originally posted by RichardC: Conspiracy theories will go viral.
Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity
DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.
June 23, 2021, 05:28 PM
ZSMICHAEL
Victim of his own success. A brief look at his past reveals a rather amoral individual.
June 23, 2021, 06:12 PM
220-9er
A man's got to know his limitations.
He made a fortune on one product and thought that made him a genius in all other affairs.
He was a nut that managed to hit the big one once, then squandered most of that.
I doubt anyone cares enough about anything he says to actually kill him.
