John David McAfee was a British-American computer programmer, businessman, and two-time presidential candidate who unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016 and in 2020.
62 Facts About John McAfee
2.
John McAfee resigned in 1994 and sold his remaining stake in the company.
3.
John McAfee became the company's most vocal critic in later years, urging consumers to uninstall the company's anti-virus software, which he characterized as bloatware.
4.
John McAfee disavowed the company's continued use of his name in branding, a practice that has persisted in spite of a short-lived corporate rebrand attempt under Intel ownership.
5.
John McAfee resided for a number of years in Belize, but returned to the United States in 2013 while wanted in Belize for questioning on suspicion of murder.
6.
In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain over US tax evasion charges.
7.
US federal prosecutors brought criminal and civil charges alleging that John McAfee had failed to file income taxes over a four-year period.
8.
John McAfee was born in Cinderford, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England, on 18 September 1945, on a US Army base, to an American father, Don John McAfee, who was stationed there, and a British mother, Joan.
9.
John McAfee's father was from Roanoke, Virginia, and McAfee was himself primarily raised in Salem, Virginia, United States.
10.
John McAfee said he felt as much British as American.
11.
John McAfee had spent his childhood living in fear that a beating from his father could happen at any time, and struggled to make sense of why this was happening to him.
12.
John McAfee received a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1967 from Roanoke College in Virginia, which subsequently awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 2008.
13.
John McAfee was employed as a programmer by NASA's Institute for Space Studies in New York City from 1968 to 1970 working on the Apollo program.
14.
John McAfee worked for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton from 1980 to 1982.
15.
In 1987 John McAfee created John McAfee Associates Inc to sell this software, which he named VirusScan.
16.
John McAfee was incorporated in Delaware in 1992, and had its initial public offering the same year.
17.
In January 2014, Intel announced that John McAfee-related products would be marketed as Intel Security.
18.
In February 2010, John McAfee started the company QuorumEx, headquartered in Belize, which aimed to produce herbal antibiotics that disrupt quorum sensing in bacteria.
19.
In June 2013, John McAfee uploaded a parody video titled How to Uninstall John McAfee Antivirus onto his YouTube channel.
20.
Also in 2013, John McAfee founded Future Tense Central, which aimed to produce a secure computer network device called the D-Central.
21.
In February 2014, John McAfee announced Cognizant, an application for smartphones, which displays information about the permissions of other installed applications.
22.
At the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas in August 2014, John McAfee warned people not to use smartphones, suggesting apps are used to spy on clueless consumers who do not read privacy user agreements.
23.
In February 2016, John McAfee publicly volunteered to decrypt the iPhone used by Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in San Bernardino, avoiding the need for Apple to build a backdoor.
24.
John McAfee later admitted that his claims regarding the ease of cracking the phone were a publicity stunt, while still asserting its possibility.
25.
In May 2016, John McAfee was appointed chairman and CEO of MGT Capital Investments, a technology holding company.
26.
John McAfee changed MGT's focus from social gaming to cybersecurity, saying "anti-virus software is dead, it no longer works", and that "the new paradigm has to stop the hacker getting in" before he or she can do damage.
27.
John McAfee moved MGT into the mining of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, both to make money for the company, and to increase MGT's expertise in dealing with blockchains, which he thought was important for cybersecurity.
28.
On 13 August 2018, John McAfee took a position of CEO with Luxcore, a cryptocurrency company focused on enterprise solutions.
29.
John McAfee was a libertarian, advocating the decriminalization of cannabis, an end to the war on drugs, non-interventionism in foreign policy, a free market economy which does not redistribute wealth, and upholding free trade.
30.
John McAfee advocated increased cyber awareness and more action against the threat of cyberwarfare.
31.
On 8 September 2015, John McAfee announced a bid for president of the United States in the 2016 presidential election, as the candidate of a newly formed political party called the Cyber Party.
32.
John McAfee's running mate was photographer, commercial real estate broker and Libertarian activist Judd Weiss.
33.
John McAfee came in second in the primaries and third at the 2016 Libertarian National Convention.
34.
Contrary to his assertion at the 2016 convention, John McAfee tweeted on 3 June 2018 that he would run for president again in 2020, either with the Libertarian Party or a separate party that he would create.
35.
On 22 January 2019, John McAfee tweeted that he would continue his campaign "in exile", following reports that he, his wife, and four campaign staff were indicted for tax-related felonies by the IRS.
36.
John McAfee said he was in "international waters", and had previously tweeted that he was going to Venezuela.
37.
John McAfee contended that taxes were illegal, and claimed in 2019 that he had not filed a tax return since 2010.
38.
John McAfee referred to himself as "a prime target" of the Internal Revenue Service.
39.
John McAfee was named a defendant in a 2008 civil court case related to his Aerotrekking light-sport aircraft venture and the death of nephew Joel Bitow and a passenger.
40.
In 2012, Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez confirmed that John McAfee was neither convicted nor charged, only suspected.
41.
On 2 August 2015, John McAfee was arrested in Henderson County, Tennessee, on one count of driving under the influence and one count of possession of a firearm while intoxicated.
42.
On 11 August 2020, John McAfee falsely stated that he was arrested in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic after refusing to replace a lace thong with a more effective face mask.
43.
John McAfee later tweeted a picture of himself with a bruised eye, claiming it occurred during this arrest.
44.
John McAfee buried himself in sand for several hours with a cardboard box over his head.
45.
John McAfee then appeared publicly in Guatemala City, where he unsuccessfully sought political asylum.
46.
John McAfee's lawyer said he had no heart attacks, rather high blood pressure and anxiety attacks.
47.
John McAfee later said he faked the heart attacks to buy time for his attorney to file a series of appeals that ultimately prevented his deportation to Belize, thus hastening that government's decision to send him back to the United States.
48.
On 12 December 2012, John McAfee was released and deported to the United States.
49.
In January 2019, John McAfee announced that he was on the run from US authorities, and living internationally on a boat following the convening of a grand jury to indict him, his wife, and four of his 2020 Libertarian Party presidential primaries staff on tax evasion charges.
50.
On 5 October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain at the request of the United States Department of Justice for tax evasion.
51.
John McAfee was jailed in Spain, pending extradition to the United States.
52.
On 23 June 2021, the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to face charges in Tennessee; John McAfee is suspected to have committed suicide several hours after the authorization.
53.
John McAfee met his first wife, Fran, circa 1968 while he was working towards a doctorate at Northeast Louisiana State College and she was an 18-year-old undergraduate student.
54.
John McAfee married his second wife, Judy, a former flight attendant at American Airlines, circa 1987; they divorced in 2002.
55.
The night after John McAfee arrived in the United States after being deported from Guatemala in December 2012, he was solicited by and slept with Janice Dyson, then a prostitute 30 years his junior in South Beach, Miami Beach, Florida.
56.
On 23 June 2021, John McAfee was found dead in his prison cell, hours after the Spanish National Court ordered his extradition to the United States on criminal charges filed in Tennessee by the United States Department of Justice Tax Division.
57.
John McAfee's death ignited speculation and conspiracy theories about the possibility that he was murdered.
58.
Several times, John McAfee claimed if he were ever found dead by hanging, it would mean he was murdered.
59.
John McAfee's widow reaffirmed this position in her first public remarks since her husband's death, and called for a "thorough" investigation.
60.
On 13 February 2022, a Spanish court ruled John McAfee died by suicide.
61.
Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee is a Showtime Networks documentary about the portion of McAfee's life spent in Belize.
62.
The aforementioned documentary Running With the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee includes footage from an unreleased documentary by Vice, and interviews by Rocco Castoro, Alex Cody Foster, and Robert King.