John McAfee, tycoon, and creator of the famous antivirus that bears his surname were arrested last October in Spain, for alleged tax evasion and tax fraud offenses. The events he was charged with took place between 2014 and 2018. The U.S. Department of Justice accuses him of failing to file his tax returns.
John McAfee turns up dead in prison in Barcelona after his extradition to the U.S. approved
This Wednesday John McAfee appeared dead in the cell where he was imprisoned in Barcelona, Spain, according to what was reported by the judicial authorities who have clarified that “everything points to the fact that it could be a death by suicide”. This event took place a few hours after the Spanish National Court accepted his extradition to the United States, where he has been held for years on charges of tax evasion.
His arrest in Spain was because he spends some time in this country. The tycoon had asked for parole, but a court denied this possibility. For this decision, it was considered that there was a risk of flight and that John MacAfee had “no appreciable sign of rootedness”.
McAfee was charged with several counts of tax evasion after promoting sales of cryptocurrency tokens valued at millions of dollars and failing to explain that he was being paid for those transactions. McAfee was facing up to ten years in prison on charges that he defrauded his country’s tax authorities of up to $4 million.
Pioneering entrepreneur in the anti-virus industry
McAfee graduated in 1967 as a mathematician from Roanoke College, a university that awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2008. Among his jobs, he worked for the U.S. space agency, NASA, for two years and companies such as Univac and Xerox.
In 1984, after tough years of drug and alcohol addiction, McAfee landed a job with defense contractor Lockheed Martin, where he worked on a secret voice recognition program. According to BBC, McAfee received a copy of Brain, which is considered the first computer virus for the MS-DOS operating system, and designed an antivirus to eradicate it.
This work inspired him and he decided to create a business of his own: McAfee Associates. Over the years, this was sold to Intel for more than $7.6 billion. By 1995 McAfee had retired from the company.
Years surrounded by controversy
The October arrest was not the first time that the now deceased had a run-in with the country’s justice system. Last August, McAfee was arrested at a Spanish airport for using a thong as a mask.
McAfee was a friend of tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sex trafficking. And he, like other friends of Epstein, questioned his suicide in his cell. In fact, on October 15, 2020, when he had been in the Catalan prison for a few days, McAfee tweeted: “I am satisfied here. I have friends. The food is good. Everything is good. Know that if I hang myself, Epstein style, it won’t be my fault”.
I am content in here. I have friends.
The food is good. All is well.
Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) October 15, 2020
Since 2011 he said on several occasions that he was not safe in the United States and that there was a plot against him by the government. In 2019 he was arrested in the Dominican Republic when his ship docked in the country and authorities found weapons and cash.
