What is known about the most grandiose swindler of the XXI century: Antivirus creator and criminal John McAfee

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

As you know, the famous mafioso Al Capone was able to be arrested only because of tax evasion. All other attempts to find evidence of his crimes have failed. The creator of a very popular antivirus, which was once used by almost everyone, John McAfee has long been suspected of a number of crimes, but was also caught on taxes.

If there was a film about John McAfee, it would be a gamble. With elements of crime. And the audience, leaving the hall, would say: they say, the scriptwriters cheated, who saw such a person in real life, and not in some computer game? If the authors of books about the crimes of narcissistic personalities needed the most diverse illustrative material from one biography, McAfee could be used for the entire book. Or five. Only then I would have to regret it greatly.

The McAfee antivirus icon can still be found on many computers. It is a program that protects computer users from cybercriminals. It is impossible to imagine that it is named after its creator - a man who is suspected of many crimes.

McAfee's penultimate arrest, in the fall of 2020 in Norway, looked like sheer farce. The legend of the IT world demonstratively walked down the street in lace panties on his face - instead of a mask. Interestingly, his wife went with him in the same form, but they took aiming at McAfee. However, his wife wrote with disdain from his account: they say, come on, we'll pay off again. And indeed, soon John was released … To almost immediately be arrested on charges from the United States. Vicious multi-year tax evasion.

While evasion does exist (John bragged about it in public in 2019), there is little doubt that they took McAfee for old sins known to the public and unknown in the aggregate.

It all started with drugs

Usually this phrase precedes the story of the fall, but in the life of McAfee it is difficult to say at what point he began and stopped morally falling, but you can determine when he took off in his career and earnings. McAfee was born into an alcoholic family. His father committed suicide when John was fifteen. The boy had to start working early in a non-adolescent scale. He was fascinated by computers, and he gradually moved from unskilled labor to a good job on the railway - he used computers and punched cards to calculate train timetables.

Despite outwardly good socialization, John used drugs. A good job gave him money for this destructive hobby. It was mainly LSD, which was fashionable in those years, but one day he was sold a bag of a new drug. Since the effect did not come quickly, McAfee decided that the drug was weak and consumed the entire packet. After that, he began to have vivid and terrible hallucinations. He ran out of work, hid among the garbage bins and refused to answer the questions of passers-by. After this incident, he left his job (yes, he was not fired) and began his fast-paced career in the world of computer technology.

In the future, he more than once became addicted to drugs and was treated for them. Most likely, in his case, drugs were not the cause, but the consequence of the oddities of his character. He was always drawn to a vivid sensation. And, probably, one of the most striking was the feeling of their own impunity. By the way, NASA was among McAfee's jobs during the period of his addiction to another drug. Perhaps it's a miracle that none of the American astronauts were found flying to Neptune.

In 1986, the first computer virus appeared, and McAfee realized where the gold mine was now. He created his own antivirus, the very popular McAffee. Even now, it is one of the five most popular antiviruses. The company that officially manufactures the security software was founded by John in 1987. And in 1984 he left it, most likely - because of the conflicts that constantly arise around him. But John sold the shares to IT giant Intel only in 1996. Almost immediately, IT circles began to predict that soon no one else would hear anything about McAfee.

Indeed, until 2000, he mainly practiced yoga and lectured, living comfortably on the money received from the sale of shares. I tried to work on a messenger that never got off the ground and consulted with other startups. He also bought several houses and land for his own air club, which he called the "Heavenly Gypsies."

McAfee: New Adventures

In 2009, McAfee officially sold all or almost all of his real estate in the United States and left for Belize, a small Latin American state. This is usually attributed to McAfee's reluctance to share money (in the form of taxes) with the American government, but there were also strange rumors about a series of accidents at his air club.

In Belize, McAfee met microbiologist Allison Adonisio, who had a brilliant, as both of them thought, idea about a new medical method of using herbal herbs. She was passionate about creating a new generation of antibiotics. McAfee founded QuorumEx with her, and while microbiological research was taking money, not bringing it in, John started selling coffee and cigarettes. These products never cease to be popular. He also started injecting himself with testosterone to keep feeling macho - after all, the years began to take their toll.

Later, conversations about cooperation with a brilliant scientist somehow come to naught, and even later a documentary film will emerge following the rape of Adonisio and the murder of a man named Fowl, a common acquaintance of her and McAfee. And according to this film, it will come out so that it is John who is guilty of both crimes.

McAfee vigorously denied the credibility of the film, claiming that all the testimony given by eyewitnesses in it had been paid for. Belize, they say, is a poor country, for money anyone can tell you anything. And he, John, is being persecuted because he allegedly fought against drug dealers (by the way, during this fight his own house was searched in search of a secret drug laboratory). By the way, the man whose murder was in question was not somehow involved in McAfee's business or crimes. He just constantly complained to the police that the army of dogs, which McAfee got because of paranoia, barked loudly at night.

By the way, about paranoia. In the area where, thanks to his money, McAfee lived, mostly drug dealers lived. It worried him very much, and he decided to hire … the local police. He bought the policemen weapons, equipment, paid them literally everything, and they turned into his personal guard. At some point, John clearly began to feel like a local king and surrounded himself with a harem of underage girls.

After the murder of a neighbor, McAfee was put on the wanted list as a suspect. John was hiding like in real action movies. He changed his appearance by dyeing his hair, changing his hairstyle and holding the gum under his upper lip. He changed shelters, hired a double so that he flashed in the places he needed, illegally crossed the border. In the end, McAfee was tracked down not by police, but by journalists, and immediately handed over to the law. To delay the deportation to Belize, McAfee twice very convincingly simulated a heart attack and eventually somehow ended up being deported not to the country that was looking for him, but to the United States.

DO NOT lay low

In Miami, McAfee married a woman named Janice Dyson. Usually the media adds that she is a former prostitute. In any case, after the wedding, McAfee, not sparing her feelings too much, proudly told everyone that several dozen of his biological children were growing up in Belize. Do they have something to eat after their father started a new life in another country, he, however, was in no hurry to be frank.

McAfee was stopped while driving under medication - he claimed that it was only medication for panic attacks. He tried to run for president of the United States, creating his own "Cyber Party", and then - from the party of libertarians. Then, all of a sudden, for everyone, John found himself in the place of the CEO of the IT company MGT Capital Investments. Prior to that, the company mainly invested in the development of games for social networks, but John decided to go back to the good old antivirus.

It was in this company that another scandal broke out with the participation of McAfee. He tried to offer a large sum of money to another firm for announcing an alleged partnership with MGT. The person who received the bribe offer tweeted about it and also told how McAfee behaved aggressively with a third party, insulting and threatening him. It seems that it was on Twitter, when discussing all the adventures and behavior of McAfee, the definition of "narcissistic personality" sounded.

For narcissistic personalities of a criminal mind, the ability to charm and a tendency to commit crimes are characteristic, often not for profit, but for the very sense of power over the situation and other people. Such people often find themselves in tasty positions and - in the center of scandals with threats, insults and accidents. Do people like that kill? Sometimes. Are they being raped? Often. The film about the murder of McAfee's neighbor and the rape of his business partner began to be discussed again. However, the scandal did not go far.

Soon, McAfee was on the crest of a new wave - cryptocurrency. He promised them a bright future, advised on them, and predicted the rise of specific currencies. As it turned out later, he did all this for bribes, and his "analysis" and "forecasts" were nothing more than advertising. This discovery seriously hit McAfee's credibility.

In 2019, John announced that he was being pursued by the US authorities for refusing to pay taxes. In 2020, he was arrested in the Dominican Republic on suspicion of possessing large amounts of illegal weapons - but soon (as usual) was released. Until now, he has been under investigation for that very murder the longest - two years. Then, all of a sudden, all the questions of the guardians of the law disappeared.

While John lived from one new arrest to another, journalists investigated and found out that the story of bribes and cryptocurrencies was, in fact, a story of blackmail, a criminal offense. McAfee literally extorted money: if you don't pay, he said, I'll drown you with a few words. I am a trusted analyst. And so it was at that moment. Will the accusation of blackmail be added to other charges - from the IRS and from the US Securities Commission - for which McAfee already shines for thirty years? Time will show.

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