The changeable life of the antivirus pioneer
Software mogul, eccentric, accused criminal: John McAfee made headlines. An insight into a life with ups and downs.
“Pakistani Brain” is the name of the virus that John McAfee discovered in the 1980s. The malicious program that made the disk drives slower spread on floppy disks. McAfee, born in 1945 and then employed by a space company, wrote anti-virus software – within a day and a half, as he will later tell. He started his own business in 1987 with his software.
As one of the first experts in computer security, he had many media appearances and fueled what for him was a lucrative fear of digital attacks. The rumor that stayed with McAfee all his life: He himself brought the viruses into circulation that his programs were supposed to protect against. Even so, he became a millionaire with his security software. After his company went public, he got out in 1994 and sold his shares to Intel. At times, John McAfee’s net worth was valued at over $ 100 million, of which he is believed to have lost over 90 million in the 2008 financial crisis.
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Murder and rape in tax haven
McAfee lived for a few years in a beach villa in Belize, Central America. He is said to have had excessive parties there. The millionaire boasted of many young lovers, surrounded himself with prostitutes and caught the police’s attention, among other things, because of the possession of prohibited weapons. Restrained and inconspicuous was not his style: McAfee set up a laboratory for his pharmaceutical company “QuorumEx” in the jungle of Belize. An employee from that time reported him for rape. He is said to have threatened her with a gun. The fall went nowhere.
In 2012, the Belizean police followed him in connection with the murder of his neighbor. McAfee decided to flee to Guatemala. Journalists who were allowed to accompany him inadvertently betrayed his position. In the prison in Guatemala, McAfee claims to have had several heart attacks in order to delay his extradition to Belize.
Paid Twitter posts on ICO
In 2016, McAfee wanted to found a cyber party and registered as an independent candidate for the US presidential election. Three years later he was noticed as a crypto influencer. However, the Justice Department charged him last year with tax evasion. In the Indictment It says that McAfee did not file any tax returns in the years 2014 to 2018, although he received “millions in income from the promotion of cryptocurrencies, consulting activities, lectures and the sale of the rights to his life story for a documentary film”. He himself once said in a video that he had not paid taxes for eight years.
He was also sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The accusation: unfair advertising for crypto currencies. On Twitter, McAfee recommended that its followers invest in ICO. He is said to have collected more than $ 23 million in Bitcoin and Ether for this. A conviction could have resulted in up to five years in prison and heavy fines for fivefold tax evasion and other offenses for McAfee.
In October 2020, the 75-year-old was arrested at Barcelona El Prat Airport at the instigation of American authorities. Since then, McAfee has been in a Catalan prison near Barcelona. On Wednesday, the Spanish judiciary gave the green light to extradite McAfee to the United States. On Wednesday afternoon (June 23, 2021), John McAfee was found dead in his cell. According to media reports, the authorities assume a suicide. The result of an autopsy is still pending.
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