John McAfee's crazy life, from antivirus pioneer to perennial fugitive

John McAfee's crazy life

In 1986 he sensed the great economic opportunity of cyber security. Then wrong investments, scams and the flight continues. Until his death in prison in Barcelona

John McAfee (Luis Echeverria, Photoshot / Ipa) It was January 19, 1986 when the first computer virus in history began to spread all over the world via floppy disk: Brain. For John McAfee, a 41-year-old graduate in mathematics at the time and already active in the IT sector, he was an enlightenment: he immediately called a programmer friend of his to explain to him how a huge economic opportunity lies behind Brain. From the McAfee home in Santa Clara, California, the two begin work on software that can fight viruses: VirusScan, a product of the newborn McAfee Associates.

At the time, the world wide web has yet to be born from Tim Berners-Lee's mind, but computers can still communicate with each other via bulletin boards, which allow you to remotely access a central system through the which one to download and share resources. It is by this means that McAfee makes its antivirus available, with the belief that companies would pay for the license to use it professionally and protect their computers from the newest cyber threats. He was right: already in 1990, John McAfee pocketed something like 5 million dollars a year. The of him is the first commercial antivirus in history, the absolute pioneer of a sector - that of cybersecurity - which today is worth something like 156 billion dollars (and in which the company that has become known only as McAfee still plays an important role).

It is the event that turns the life of John McAfee, born in Great Britain in 1945 but moved to Virginia, United States, as a child. Unlike many other protagonists of the technological scene, his life is anything but easy: his father is an alcoholic whom McAfee has always accused of countless and heavy violence against his son and his wife and who committed suicide in 1971. From then, McAfee told the US edition of Wired, “every day I wake up with him. In every relationship I have, he is always by my side. Whenever I have no confidence, it is the cause of that distrust ”.

After antivirus

Perhaps it is also this general distrust and restlessness that persuades him to do what few entrepreneurs usually do: already in 1994, only two years after the listing of the company that bears his name, McAfee resigns from the company, sells all of his shares, pockets $ 80 million and embarks on a series of IT companies that leave very little traces of the antivirus company, which will then be bought in 2010 (and subsequently demerged) from Intel.

John McAfee's economic fortune, however, is short-lived: after having collected the money from the sale of the shares of his creature (which he will later define as having become "the worst software on the planet"), in 2008 he loses almost everything: his assets plummet from $ 100 to $ 4 million following the 2008 financial crisis and a series of bad investments. It is following this story that his life takes a turn between the histrionic, the absurd and the criminal.

In an attempt to escape economic difficulties, McAfee in fact moves to Belize, a small Central American state, where - according to the Guardian's definition - “he cultivates an image of a shirtless boss of new age medicines, always in risk of kidnapping and with a lot of armed bodyguards and gangsters on the payroll ”. But the list of illicit, bizarre or immoral practices McAfee dedicates himself to would require an encyclopedia: in 2012 it is linked with the gunshot death of his neighbor Gregory Viant Faull, for which, years later, will be forced to pay $ 25 million in damages by a Florida court. Compensation that he will always refuse to honor, making it known that he "never paid compensation for any of the 37 lawsuits that have been brought to me."

The tenor of the character is also clarified through other details: at the time, when McAfee was already 67, he lived with a girl of 17, which he will boast about in a 2016 documentary stating: " I have many teenage girlfriends, even more than one at a time ”. According to a journalist who spent a lot of time with him, there was even one occasion when, to prove his temper, he played Russian roulette by repeatedly squeezing the trigger of a loaded gun aimed at his temple. After escaping from Belize to avoid a possible arrest following the death of his neighbor, he will still end up in prison in Guatemala for illegal entry and then in 2015, returned to the United States, also in Tennessee, for drunk driving and possession of Weapons.

The passion for cryptocurrencies

But how did such a character earn a living? This is where one of McAfee's greatest recent passions comes into play: cryptocurrencies. After becoming an industry influencer with a million followers on Twitter, he uses this position to spread more and more excessive predictions. The most famous is that of 2017, when he announces that bitcoins will reach the value of one million dollars by 2020, promising that if this were not the case "he would have eaten his balls on live TV" (instead reneging on his promise) . More generally, though, McAfee uses his influence to make money. Lots of money. According to the revenue agency, the cybersecurity pioneer earned $ 23 million by exploiting the 2017/18 cryptocurrency and ICO bubble and advertising countless companies in the sector - more or less scammers - on Twitter, always pretending to be a disinterested supporter. .

Among the most daring enterprises, however, there are certainly the various nominations for president of the United States. In 2015 he participated in the primaries of the small Libertarian Party in view of the presidential elections the following year, but came third and last. In 2019 he tries again by focusing his program on cryptocurrencies and on the aversion to taxes, but announces that his electoral campaign will proceed in exile, as he risks being arrested for tax evasion. From there he is spotted in Venezuela, then in Cuba (where he defends communism by infuriating the Libertarian Party) and ends up in handcuffs again while on his yacht in the Dominican Republic, accused of carrying large-caliber weapons and ammunition.

Following in his footsteps is difficult, after announcing on Twitter, in 2019, that he has not paid taxes for eight years because "taxation is illegal", he lives in constant flight from the United States until, in October 2020 , is arrested in Spain at the request of the United States and again for tax evasion. And it is precisely here that, on June 23, 2021, John McAfee is found dead (a suicide is alleged, but the investigations are still ongoing) in a prison near Barcelona, ​​a few hours after learning that the extradition request had been accepted. in the United States, where he feared - according to his statements - that he would have to spend the rest of his life in prison. At 75, the life of a cybersecurity pioneer ends, but whose existence will probably be remembered for being by far the most incredible, excessive, outlawed in all of Silicon Valley history.


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