Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee was arrested on Tuesday in Barcelona, Spain as he was preparing to board a flight bound for Istanbul, Turkey. He’ll soon be back in the states on tax evasion charges. It’s been an interesting 8 years for the eccentric computer scientist.
McAfee arrested again
By the end of the 1980’s, John McAfee’s name was a household word as the creator of the aggressively marketed anti-virus software, which was one of the first to be widely used. On Tuesday, McAfee was arrested in Barcelona, Spain, while preparing to board a flight bound for Istanbul, Turkey. The 75-year-old U.K. born computer scientist with American nationality has been charged by U.S. authorities for tax fraud allegedly committed between 2014 and 2018. He’s also charged with failing to “declare several million in income from the promotion of crypto-currency, consultancy services, conferences and the sale of rights for a future documentary on his life.”
According to the department of Justice, McAfee had the money for things like real estate and a yacht paid into “other people’s accounts and in virtual currencies to avoid declaring them for tax purposes.” The indictment was filed under seal in June of this year but the Department of Justice told the public about it in a statement Monday. The timing matches up with a freshly issued Interpol warrant for the fugitive just before he was arrested. McAfee has eluded authorities since 2019.
McAfee is currently held in “pre-trial detention” and “expected to be extradited to the United States shortly.” He’s been living like a playboy since 2010 when Intel handed the oddball entrepreneur a cool $ 7.6 billion for the company he founded, McAfee Associates. They quickly renamed it Intel Security to distance themselves from the infamous eccentric after he kept getting arrested.
An interesting 8 years
The past 8 years have been extremely interesting for John McAfee, he’s having so much fun that he keeps getting arrested for it. Someone killed his neighbor and the Belize police had a really good idea that it was him. The matter went away for a quick $25 million. While that unpleasantness was still pending, he slipped across the border to Guatemala. There, he got into a jam over the informal way he immigrated. They deported him to the U.S.
As soon as he was back on American soil, he reportedly “quite literally married the first prostitute to solicit him.” Despite his record of being arrested time and again, McAfee tried to run for president in 2016 and again in 2020. Even the Libertarians thought he was too strange too nominate him. He quickly dove into the cryptocurrency market headfirst. He infamously made a bet on national TV to provide oral pleasure to his own anatomy if Bitcoin didn’t “hit $500K within three years.” He lost. His scheme tanked so bad that he “became a fugitive a second time over.”
Living in exile never bothered McAfee. He was a frequent contributor to “Dealbreaker.” As a hobby, he “offered to conspire with the Cubans to evade the U.S. embargo against them,” then got arrested again when he “attempted to enter the Dominican Republic with a small arsenal.” From there, they deported him to London. After kicking around the U.K. and after not getting named “Her Majesty’s first minister,” headed to Spain. He might have thought twice about that if he looked into their extradition laws.