Last October, he assured that “everything was fine” in his Spanish cell, and that if he was found hanged “à la Epstein”, that would “not be of [sa] fault ”. But John McAfee, the sulphurous American creator of the famous eponymous antivirus software was found dead on Wednesday, and according to the Spanish prison authorities, he “apparently committed suicide”. A dramatic end that comes when a Spanish court had just ordered his extradition to the United States where he was accused of tax evasion and risked up to 30 years in prison.
The 75-year-old businessman was found dead in his cell at Brians 2 prison near Barcelona. “Apparently he committed suicide,” said a spokeswoman for the prison authorities in Catalonia, in northeastern Spain. She did not provide further details.
Tax fraud and cryptocurrency scam
After making his fortune with his antivirus in the 1980s, John McAfee had become a cryptocurrency guru with which he claimed to earn $ 2,000 a day and was followed by nearly a million people on Twitter. He was arrested in October 2020 at Barcelona airport, just before boarding a plane to Istanbul, the day after a US prosecutor published an indictment against him for failing to report millions of dollars in revenue from cryptocurrency promotion, consulting services, conferences, and rights sold so that a documentary about his life could be made. He was then placed in pre-trial detention.
According to American justice, John McAfee also concealed property, including real estate, a yacht and a car by putting them in the name of other people. The US authorities had issued an arrest warrant via Interpol and requested his extradition. He risked being sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. The entrepreneur was also indicted in March by the American justice system for having promoted several operations related to cryptocurrency to his fans on Twitter without telling them that he was probably going to withdraw tidy sums from them.
Escape and mysterious murder of his neighbor in Belize
In a tweet on June 16, John McAfee pointed out that US authorities believed he had “hidden” cryptocurrencies. “I wish that were true,” he continued. “All I had left was taken away (…) I have nothing. However, I do not regret anything”.
His wife Janice has long complained about the harshness, both physically and mentally, of her husband’s conditions of detention. “The American authorities are determined to see John die in prison,” she accused Sunday on Twitter. “(…) There is no hope that he will ever have a fair trial in America.”
John McAfee hit the headlines in 2012 when his neighbor in Belize, a small Central American country, was mysteriously murdered, a matter still unclear to this day. The police then discovered that he was living with a 17-year-old girl and that he had several weapons in his house. Wanted by the Belize authorities to be heard as a witness, McAfee had embarked on an incredible run that had kept the media in suspense for a month. He was arrested in Guatemala after the publication of a photo by a journalist who forgot to deactivate geolocation and then deported to the United States.
In 2015, he was arrested in the United States for driving under the influence of drugs and was then discreet in the media, until January 2019 when he fled his country while saying he wanted to run for president. . After the news of his death, his Instagram account posted a mysterious Q, a symbol of the Q-Anon conspiracy movement. Even six feet under, John McAfee has not finished talking about him.
McAfee case: A murder + an eccentric and paranoid billionaire = An incredible getaway