Antivirus Creator John McAfee Found Dead In His Prison Cell
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John McAfee, the founder of antivirus software company McAfee Associates and a technology millionaire with commercial ventures in apps, cryptocurrency and herbal antibiotics, has died.
In March of this year, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York formally indicted McAfee and an executive adviser for allegedly "fraudulently promoting certain cryptocurrencies and performing pump and dump schemes." However, McAfee was found dead in his prison cell in Barcelona, only hours after his extradition to the United States was announced. The Catalan Justice Department is certain that he died by suicide but this conclusion is not officially confirmed at the time of writing. Prison medical staff attempted to resuscitate McAfee but they were unsuccessful.
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.
- John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 18, 2021
Not only was he renowned for his significant contributions to cybersecurity and computer programming, McAfee intended to run for the role of president of the United States in early 2019. At the same time, he was on the run from the authorities due to charges of tax evasion, and was living on a boat to avoid capture.
"I have not paid taxes for eight years. I have not filed returns. Every year I tell the IRS 'I am not filing a return, I have no intention of doing so, come and find me,'" said McAfee in a video published to Twitter while at sea. "Today, January 22, the IRS has convened a grand jury in the state of Tennessee. To charge myself, my wife, four of my campaign workers, with unspecified IRS crimes. They want to silence me, I will not allow that."
This wasn't the first instance that the businessman had brushed with the law. Gregory Faull, a 52-year-old American expatriate who lived next door to McAfee on the island of Ambergris Caye in Belize, was killed by a gunshot wound in 2012, and McAfee became a "person of interest" in the investigations. McAfee, however, believed that the murderer was in fact looking for him and entered Faull's house mistakenly. He went into hiding as he claimed that the police would kill him if they caught him. "You can say I'm paranoid about it but they will kill me, there is no question. They've been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me. I am not well liked by the prime minister. I am just a thorn in everybody's side," said McAfee.
Late last year, McAfee was confronted and arrested in Spain by the American authorities for hiding millions of dollars in income in cryptocurrency, a yacht, real estate and other properties in nominee names to evade taxes. Furthermore, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claimed that McAfee had fraudulently promoted initial coin offerings as he had pretended to be an impartial investor in these cryptocurrencies, yet he had apparently been paid $23 million in digital assets.
