Anti-virus creator John McAfee found dead in Spanish prison cell

Anti-virus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been found dead in a Barcelona prison cell, hours after a Spanish court agreed to extradite him to the US to face tax evasion charges.

The Catalan Justice Department said prison medics tried to resuscitate him, but were not successful. It said “everything indicates” that McAfee took his own life.

A controversial figure in the tech world, his company released the first commercial anti-virus software. It was wildly successful and made him a rich man. McAfee VirusScan helped to spark a multi-billion dollar industry in the computer world, and was eventually sold to technology giant Intel for more than $7.6bn.

In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain when he was about to board a plane to Turkey, and accused of failing to file tax returns for four years, despite earning millions from consulting work, speaking engagements, crypto-currencies and selling the rights to his life story.

The US Justice Department alleged that McAfee evaded tax liability by having his income paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees.

The Security and Exchange Commission, the American regulator, alleges that McAfee made over €19.5 million by “leveraging his fame” and recommending seven cryptocurrency offerings between 2017 and 2018, which allegedly turned out to be "essentially worthless", without disclosing that he was paid to do so.

He was also accused of concealing assets, including a yacht and real estate property, also in other people's names.

Spain’s National Court authorised his extradition to the US to face the charges on Wednesday morning.

In recent years, McAfee repeatedly claimed that there was a plot to get him - however the court said there was “no revealing evidence” that he was being prosecuted for political or ideological reasons. He had argued in a hearing earlier this month that the charges against him were politically motivated and that he would spend the rest of his life in prison if returned to the US.

The entrepreneur, who was born in Gloucestershire, England first came to prominence in the 1980s when he founded his tech company and released McAfee VirusScan.

He also launched unsuccessful bids to become the Libertarian Party's candidate for the presidential elections in 2016 and 2020.

In 2019 McAfee expressed his disdain for taxes, tweeting that he had not filed tax returns for eight years because “taxation is illegal”.

In the same year he was briefly detained in the Dominican Republic for allegedly bringing weapons into the country.

Malta guest during Blockchain frenzy

John McAfee, a vociferous advocate of blockchain technology, had thanked Malta for its “forward thinking approach” to blockchain, but warned that its recently introduced regulations would soon be obsolete.

Speaking to MaltaToday on the sidelines of the Malta Blockchain Summit, McAfee shad aid his belief in cryptocurrency was rooted in the fact that he was a “big advocate of personal freedom”.

John McAfee, a vociferous advocate of blockchain technology, had thanked Malta for its “forward thinking approach” to blockchain, but warned that its recently introduced regulations would soon be obsolete

According to the computer programmer and businessman, cryptocurrencies, for the first time, have given people the ability to carry out transactions freely, and without the oversight of a government or other entity.

Asked whether as a libertarian with a well-documented distrust of governments and established power structures, was comfortable with the Maltese government being a major player in the country’s blockchain revolution, McAfee “apologised” for the “contradiction in thought”.

“It’s just the truth. Thank you Malta, for recognising the power and inevitability of cryptocurrency and the blockchain. You are very forward-thinking,” he had told MaltaToday.

He said that while regulation would help the technology establish itself further, Malta needed to prepare for a time when all its laws, regulations and goodwill would be ignored. With people having the ability to exchange goods and services between themselves, he said, it will become increasingly difficult to enforce regulations.