Born John David McAfee on 18 September 1945, McAfee was a famous politician, computer programmer and businessman. He was reported dead on 23 June 2021 from suicide by hanging. Details of his death are, however, still emerging.
There is hardly any enthusiast of politics and technology who doesn’t know of John McAfee, and the name McAfee will ring a bell for every computer user. He was a renowned British-American computer programmer, entrepreneur and politician known for developing the computer anti-virus McAfee.
John was also well known on the political scene for contesting twice for the presidency of the United States of America. He released the first-ever commercial anti-virus software in 1987 and started a company, McAfee Associates, to monetize his creation. He resigned in 1994, selling his stakes in the company.
His wealth peaked in 2007 at $100 million, before his finances went on a downward spiral during the financial crisis of 2007 & 2008. McAfee’s life was saddled with several controversies that kept him in the news throughout his lifetime. We will, in this article, look at the 5 leading controversies that surrounded the businessman during his time.
5 John McAfee controversies
1. Views on tax and tax evasion cases
The US government prosecutors brought criminal charges against John McAfee in 2020 for evading tax for four years. Nothing about this was strange because the programmer had publicly declared his opposing views about taxation in the past. He once called himself a prime target of the US Internal Revenue Service, an understandable situation, given the fact that he had not remitted his taxes for years. He declared in 2019 that taxes are illegal and that he hadn’t paid any for 10 years. He was eventually arrested in Spain in 2020, where he was allegedly on illegal asylum. John was to be extradited to the US later in 2021 before apparently taking his own life.
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2. Murder of Gregory Faull
On 12 November 2012, Belize police began to search for McAfee as a “person of interest” in connection to the murder of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull. Faull had died of a gunshot wound the previous day, and he was found in his home on an island in Belize. John was a neighbour of Faull’s at the time. He was routinely called for questioning but kept evading the Belize police. He later cited his fear of the police being after his life as his reason for refusing to cooperate with them. He eventually fled Belize, and Prime Minister Dean Barrow later went on record calling McAfee “extremely paranoid and even bonkers” It soon became public knowledge that he had run to Guatemala, and the Guatemalan police arrested him. John had applied for political asylum in the country, but the authorities denied it. He was later deported to the US on 12 December 2012.
3. Belize Authorities
McAfee had quite a few spats with the Belize authorities while he lived there. On 30 April 2012, McAfee’s property in Orange Walk Town, Belize, was raided by the Gang Suppression Unit of the Belize Police Department. The police said he was arrested for illegally manufacturing drugs and illegal possession of a firearm. The charges were later dropped, and he was declared innocent. John later claimed in 2014 that his house was raided and assets seized by the Belize police. He further alleged that his house was burnt down under suspicious circumstances. The 2012 saga that ensued after the death of his neighbour, Greg Faull, described earlier, is yet another example of his rows with the Belize Police.
4. Illegal entry of countries
In August of 2020, John published a fake story about being assaulted by the Police in Norway over a facemask issue. He had a bruised face in the photo, which he attached to a post he made on Twitter. However, the German word for “police” was noticeable on the uniform of the officer in the photo. This detail showed that his story about the Norwegian police was false. The German police force in Augsburg later revealed that McAfee had earlier attempted to enter Germany illegally that same day.
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John also absconded to Guatemala in late 2012 in a bid to evade the Belize police authorities during the investigation of his neighbour, Greg Faull’s, death. He was found out and detained, before getting deported back to the US after an unsuccessful attempt to get political asylum.
5. Cryptocurrency
On 6 October 2020, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint alleging that McAfee and his bodyguard promoted some initial coin offerings in a fraudulent cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme. According to the SEC, McAfee presented himself as an impartial investor when he promoted the ICOs, even though he was allegedly paid $23 million in digital assets in exchange for the promotions. On 5 March 2021, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York formally indicted McAfee and an executive adviser on these charges.
Death
McAfee was found dead in his prison cell at Brians 2 Penitentiary Center, near Barcelona, just a few hours after the Spanish National Court ordered his extradition to the United States on criminal charges filed by the Justice Department’s tax division. In a statement by the Catalan Police Department, his death is from all indications a suicide. Due to his previous statements that if he is ever found dead, then he was murdered, a lot of conspiracy theories about his death has emerged on the internet. However, for lack of any evidence, the press has since dismissed these theories as “baseless” and “bizarre”.
Conclusion
From all indications, John was as far from a law-abiding citizen as possible. He evaded tax, travelled illegally, and was always in one form of legal issue or another. While he claims that the government and police were after his life, it is hard to take that seriously, considering the type of life he lived. Details of his death are still emerging, and it is left to see where it all leads.
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