Anti-virus software entrepreneur John McAfee was found dead in a prison cell in Barcelona a few hours after agreeing to extradite him to the United States to face tax evasion charges in a Spanish court.
But they did not succeed. He added that “everything shows” that McAfee has ended his life. As a controversial figure in the tech world, his company released the first commercial antivirus software.
McAfee VirusScan helped fuel a multi-billion-dollar industry in computing, and it was eventually sold to technology giant Intel for more than $7.6 billion (£4.7 billion). In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain. Boarded a plane to Turkey and was accused of failing to file tax returns for four years, despite earning millions of dollars through consulting work, meetings, cryptocurrency, and the right to sell his life story.
And enter the bank account and cryptocurrency exchange account in the name of the nominee. He was also charged with concealing assets in the name of others, including a yacht and real estate. On Wednesday morning, the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to the United States to face charges.
In recent years, McAfee has repeatedly claimed that there was a conspiracy to capture him; however, the court stated that there was “obvious evidence” that he was prosecuted for political or ideological reasons.
Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that he had a hearing earlier this month. It was argued at the meeting that the charges against him were politically motivated. If he returns to the United States, he will spend the rest of his life in prison, but McAfee’s lawyer Nishay Sanan says he has done it.
He intends to fight all charges. “This is again the US government’s attempt to obliterate John McAfee”, Sanan told NPR on Wednesday.
“This man is a fighter. In the minds of everyone who knows him, he will always be a fighter.” This entrepreneur who was born in Gloucestershire, England founded his own technology company and launched it in the 1980s.
With McAfee VirusScan, it became famous in one fell swoop. Although he is a pioneer in the field of computer security, he has admitted that he has never actually used the software on his computer, nor has he used any antivirus software.
In 2019, McAfee expressed his disdain for taxes and said on Twitter that he had not filed taxes for eight years, because “taxes are illegal”. In the same year, he was briefly detained on suspicion of bringing weapons into the Dominican Republic.