Did John Mcafee Run For President

British-American developer and businessman (1945–2021)

John McAfee
McAfee at Politicon 2016
Built-in	John David McAfee (1945-09-11)11 September 1945 Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England
Died	23 June 2021(2021-06-23) (anile 75) Sant Esteve Sesrovires, Catalonia, Spain
Cause of expiry	Suicide[1]
Nationality	British American
Pedagogy	Roanoke Higher (BA)
Occupations	Man of affairs computer programmer perennial candidate
Known for	Founder of McAfee Corp.
Political party	Libertarian (before 2015, 2016–2021)
Other political affiliations	Cyber (2015–2016)
Spouses	Unnamed ​ (divorced)​ Judy Chambliss ​ (div. 2002)​ Janice Dyson ​ (m. 2013)​

John David McAfee
(

MAK-ə-fee;^[2]
[3]
18 September 1945 – 23 June 2021)^[four]
[5]
was a British-American figurer programmer, businessman, and two-time presidential candidate who unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Political party nomination for president of the The states in 2016 and in 2020. In 1987, he wrote the first commercial anti-virus software, founding McAfee Associates to sell his creation. He resigned in 1994 and sold his remaining stake in the company.^[6]
McAfee became the company’s most vocal critic in later years, urging consumers to uninstall the company’s anti-virus software, which he characterized every bit bloatware. He disavowed the company’southward continued use of his name in branding, a practise that has persisted in spite of a curt-lived corporate rebrand attempt under Intel ownership.

McAfee’southward fortunes plummeted in the fiscal crisis of 2007–2008. After leaving McAfee Associates, he founded the companies Tribal Voice (makers of the PowWow chat program), QuorumEx, and Future Tense Central, among others, and was involved in leadership positions in the companies Everykey, MGT Capital Investments, and Luxcore, amid others. His personal and business organisation interests included smartphone apps, cryptocurrency, yoga, calorie-free-sport aircraft^[7]
and recreational drug utilise. He resided for a number of years in Belize, only returned to the United states in 2013 while wanted in Belize for questioning on suspicion of murder.^[8]

In October 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain over U.S. taxation evasion charges.^[9]
U.Due south. federal prosecutors brought criminal and civil charges alleging that McAfee had failed to file income taxes over a four-yr period.^[ten]
[11]
On 23 June 2021, he was found dead due to an credible suicide by hanging in his prison cell virtually Barcelona shortly afterwards the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to the U.S.^{[12]
[xiii]
[14]}
His decease generated speculation and conspiracy theories about the possibility that he was murdered.^[15]
McAfee’s married woman, Janice McAfee, said she did not believe McAfee committed suicide, and claimed the suicide note was a forgery.^[xvi]
[17]

Early on life

[edit]

McAfee was born in Cinderford, in the Woods of Dean, Gloucestershire, England,^[xviii]
on 18 September 1945,^[19]
on a U.S. Army base (of the 596th Ordnance Ammunition Company), to an American father, Don McAfee, who was stationed there, and a British mother, Joan (Williams).^[20]
[21]
His father was from Roanoke, Virginia, and McAfee was himself primarily raised in Salem, Virginia, The states. He said he felt as much British equally American.^[22]
When he was 15, his male parent, whom a BBC columnist described every bit “an abusive alcoholic”, killed himself with a gun.^[22]
He had spent his childhood living in fear that a beating from his male parent could happen at any fourth dimension, and struggled to make sense of why this was happening to him.^[19]

McAfee received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1967 from Roanoke College in Virginia, which afterward awarded him an honorary Doc of Science degree in 2008.^[23]
Afterward receiving his bachelor’southward degree, McAfee began working towards a doctorate in mathematics at Northeast Louisiana Land College but was expelled, in about 1968, because of a relationship with an undergraduate student, who became his showtime wife.^[24]

Ventures

[edit]

NASA, Univac, Xerox, CSC, Booz Allen and Lockheed

[edit]

McAfee was employed as a programmer past NASA’due south Constitute for Infinite Studies in New York City from 1968 to 1970 working on the Apollo plan. From in that location, he went to Univac equally a software designer, and after to Xerox as an operating system builder. In 1978, he joined Computer Sciences Corporation as a software consultant. He worked for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton from 1980 to 1982.^[25]
In 1986, while employed by Lockheed, he read almost the Brain figurer virus made for the PC, and he found it terrifying.^[24]
Sensing a concern opportunity, he went about creating an antivirus software that could detect the computer virus and remove it automatically.^[21]
In 1987 McAfee created McAfee Associates Inc. to sell this software, which he named VirusScan.^[23]
This was the first anti-virus software brought to marketplace, and ane of the first software products to be distributed over the Internet.^[21]
[23]

McAfee Associates

[edit]

Initially McAfee did not seek a large userbase of paying users, but rather wanted to raise awareness of the need to be protected from reckoner viruses. However, by making people fear such malware, he managed to generate millions of sales, and by 1990 he was making five 1000000 dollars a twelvemonth.^[19]
The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1992, and had its initial public offering the aforementioned yr. In August 1993, McAfee stepped downward equally chief executive and remained with the visitor every bit the principal technical officeholder. He was succeeded by Pecker Larson.^[26]
In 1994 he sold his remaining stake in the company.^[27]
He had no further involvement in its operations.^[6]

After various mergers and ownership changes, Intel acquired McAfee in August 2010.^[28]
In January 2014, Intel announced that McAfee-related products would be marketed as Intel Security. McAfee expressed his pleasure at the name change, saying, “I am now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet.”^[29]
The business was soon de-merged from Intel, in one case more under the McAfee name.

PowWow, QuoromEx, MGT and more

[edit]

Other business ventures that were founded by McAfee include Tribal Vocalisation, which developed ane of the first instant messaging programs,^[xxx]
PowWow. In 2000, he invested in and joined the board of directors of Zone Labs, makers of firewall software, prior to its acquisition by Cheque Indicate Software in 2003.^[31]

In the 2000s McAfee invested in and advertised ultra-light flights, which he marketed as
aerotrekking.^[7]

In Baronial 2009
The New York Times
reported that McAfee’s personal fortune had declined to $4 meg from a peak of $100 1000000 due to the effect of the fiscal crisis of 2007–2008 on his investments.^[27]

In 2009, McAfee was interviewed in Belize for the CNBC special
The Bubble Decade, in which it was reported that he had invested in and/or built many mansions in the U.s.a. that went unsold when the 2007 global recession hit. The study also discussed his quest to raise plants for possible medicinal uses on his country in Belize.^[32]

In February 2010, McAfee started the company QuorumEx,^[33]
headquartered in Belize, which aimed to produce herbal antibiotics that disrupt quorum sensing in bacteria.^[34]
[35]

In June 2013, McAfee uploaded a parody video titled
How to Uninstall McAfee Antivirus
onto his YouTube aqueduct. In it, he critiques the antivirus software while snorting white pulverization and beingness stripped by scantily clad women. It received ten million views. He told Reuters the video was meant to ridicule the media’s negative coverage of him. A spokesman for McAfee Inc. called the video’s statements “ludicrous”.^[36]

Too in 2013, McAfee founded Time to come Tense Fundamental, which aimed to produce a secure computer network device called the D-Primal.^[37]
By 2016, it was as well an incubator.^[38]

In February 2014, McAfee announced Cognizant, an application for smartphones, which displays data about the permissions of other installed applications.^[39]
In April 2014, it was renamed DCentral one, and an Android version was released for costless on Google Play.^[40]
[41]

At the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas in August 2014, McAfee warned people non to use smartphones, suggesting apps are used to spy on clueless consumers who do non read privacy user agreements.^[42]
In January 2016, he became the principal evangelist for security startup Everykey.^[38]

In February 2016, McAfee publicly volunteered to decrypt the iPhone used past Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in San Bernardino, avoiding the need for Apple to build a backstairs.^[43]
He after admitted that his claims regarding the ease of nifty the phone were a publicity stunt, while still asserting its possibility.^[44]

In May 2016, McAfee was appointed chairman and CEO of MGT Capital Investments, a technology holding company. It initially said it would rename itself John McAfee Global Technologies,^[45]
although this plan was abandoned due to a dispute with Intel over rights to the “McAfee” proper name.^[46]
He changed MGT’southward focus from social gaming to cybersecurity, saying “anti-virus software is dead, it no longer works”, and that “the new paradigm has to cease the hacker getting in” before he or she can do damage.^[47]

Soon later joining MGT, McAfee said he and his team had exploited a flaw in the Android operating organization that allowed him to read encrypted messages from WhatsApp.^[48]
Gizmodo investigated his claim, and reported that he had sent reporters malware-infected phones to make this hack work. He replied: “Of class the phones had malware on them. How that malware got at that place is the story, which we will release after speaking with Google. It involves a serious flaw in the Android architecture.”^[49]

McAfee moved MGT into the mining of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, both to make money for the visitor, and to increase MGT’south expertise in dealing with blockchains, which he thought was important for cybersecurity.^[l]

In August 2017, McAfee stepped down as CEO, instead serving as MGT’s “chief cybersecurity visionary”. In Jan 2018, he left the company altogether. Both sides said the split was amicable; he said he wanted to spend all of his time on cryptocurrencies, while the company told of pressure level from potential investors to disassociate itself from him.^[51]

On xiii August 2018, McAfee took a position of CEO with Luxcore, a cryptocurrency company focused on enterprise solutions.^[52]

Politics

[edit]

Positions

[edit]

McAfee was a libertarian, advocating the decriminalization of cannabis, an finish to the war on drugs, non-interventionism in foreign policy, a gratuitous market economic system which does not redistribute wealth, and upholding free trade. He supported abolishing the Transportation Security Assistants.^[53]

McAfee advocated increased cyber awareness and more action against the threat of cyberwarfare.^[54]
He pushed religious freedom, saying that business owners should be able to deny service in circumstances that contradict their religious beliefs, adding: “No one is forcing you to buy annihilation or to cull one person over another. So why should I exist forced to do anything if I am not harming you? It’s my pick to sell, your choice to buy.”^[55]

2016 presidential campaign

[edit]

On 8 September 2015, McAfee announced a bid for president of the Us in the 2016 presidential election, every bit the candidate of a newly formed political political party chosen the Cyber Party.^[xx]
[56]
On 24 December 2015, he re-announced his candidacy bid saying that he would instead seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party.^[38]
[57]
On the campaign trail, he consistently polled alongside the political party’s other top candidates, Gary Johnson and Austin Petersen.^[58]
The three partook in the Libertarian Political party’s first nationally televised presidential debate on 29 March 2016.^[59]
His running mate was photographer, commercial real estate broker and Libertarian activist Judd Weiss.^[60]

McAfee came in second in the primaries^[61]
and tertiary at the 2016 Libertarian National Convention.^[62]

Notable endorsements

[edit]

• Adam Kokesh, talk prove host and activist^[63]
• John Moore, Nevada assemblyman^[64]
• L. Neil Smith, science fiction writer and activist^[65]

2020 presidential entrada

[edit]

Contrary to his assertion at the 2016 convention, McAfee tweeted on 3 June 2018 that he would run for president once again in 2020, either with the Libertarian Party or a split party that he would create.^[66]
He subsequently chose to run as a Libertarian.^[67]
He mainly campaigned for wider cryptocurrency employ.

On 22 Jan 2019, McAfee tweeted that he would proceed his campaign “in exile”, following reports that he, his wife, and iv campaign staff were indicted for tax-related felonies by the IRS. He said he was in “international waters”, and had previously tweeted that he was going to Venezuela.^[68]
The IRS has non commented on the declared indictments.^[69]
He defended Communist revolutionary Che Guevara on Twitter, putting himself at odds with Libertarian National Committee chairman Nicholas Sarwark, who wrote, “I hear very little buzz about McAfee this time around … making a defense of Che Guevara from Cuba may ingratiate him with the Cuban government, simply it didn’t resonate well with Libertarians.”^[lxx]

In a tweet on iv March 2020, McAfee simultaneously suspended his 2020 presidential campaign, endorsed Vermin Supreme, and announced his entrada for the Libertarian Party vice presidential nomination.^[71]
The next day, he returned to the presidential field, reversing the suspension of his bid, every bit “No ane in the Libertarian Party Would consider me For Vice President.”^[72]
The next month, he endorsed Adam Kokesh and became Kokesh’s vice-presidential candidate, while still seeking the presidency for himself.^[73]
At the 2020 Libertarian National Convention, he again lost, now to Jo Jorgensen and Fasten Cohen for the presidential and vice-presidential slots.^[74]

Economic views

[edit]

McAfee contended that taxes were illegal, and claimed in 2019 that he had not filed a taxation return since 2010. He referred to himself as “a prime target” of the Internal Revenue Service.^[75]

In July 2017, McAfee predicted on Twitter that the price of a bitcoin would spring to $500,000 within three years, adding: “If not, I volition consume my own dick on national television.”^[76]
In July 2019, he predicted a price of $1 million past the end of 2020.^[77]
In Jan 2020, he tweeted that his predictions were “a ruse to onboard new users”, and that bitcoin had limited potential because it is “an ancient technology.”^[78]

Legal problems

[edit]

McAfee was named a accused in a 2008 civil court case related to his Aerotrekking light-sport aircraft venture and the death of nephew Joel Bitow and a passenger.^[79]

On 30 April 2012, McAfee’s property in Orange Walk Town, Belize, was raided by the Gang Suppression Unit of the Belize Police Department. A GSU press release said he was arrested for unlicensed drug manufacturing and possession of an unlicensed weapon.^{[35]
[80]
[81]}
He was released without accuse.^[82]

In 2012, Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez confirmed that McAfee was neither bedevilled nor charged, only suspected.^[83]

In January 2014, while in Canada, he said that when the Belizean government raided his holding, it seized his assets, and that his house subsequently burned downwards nether suspicious circumstances.^[84]

On ii August 2015, McAfee was arrested in Henderson Canton, Tennessee, on i count of driving nether the influence and 1 count of possession of a firearm while intoxicated.^[85]

In July 2019, McAfee and members of his entourage were arrested while his yacht was docked at Puerto Plata, Dominican Commonwealth, on suspicion of carrying high-caliber weapons and ammunition. They were held for four days and released.^[86]
Weapons were seized, co-ordinate to the Public Ministry building.^[87]

On eleven August 2020, McAfee falsely stated that he was arrested in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic after refusing to supervene upon a lace thong with a more effective confront mask. He later tweeted a film of himself with a bruised eye, claiming information technology occurred during this arrest.^[88]
The photo of the declared abort shows an officeholder with the German language word for “police” on his uniform, invalidating McAfee’southward claim of having been arrested in Norway. The Augsburg police later said he tried to enter Frg on that 24-hour interval, only was non arrested.^[89]

Death of Gregory Faull

[edit]

On 12 Nov 2012, Belize police began to search for McAfee every bit a person of involvement in connection to the homicide investigation of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull, who was institute dead of a gunshot wound the day before, at his home on the island of Ambergris Caye, the largest island in Belize.^[90]
[91]
Faull was a neighbor of McAfee’s.^[92]
In a gimmicky interview with
Wired,^[93]
McAfee said he had been afraid police would impale him and refused their routine questions and evaded them.^[92]
He cached himself in sand for several hours with a paper-thin box over his head.^[19]
Belize’south prime number minister, Dean Barrow, chosen him “extremely paranoid, even bonkers”.^[94]
He fled Belize rather than cooperate.^{[95]
[96]
[97]}

In December 2012, the magazine
Vice
accidentally gave away McAfee’s location at a Guatemalan resort, when a photo taken by i of its journalists accompanying him was posted with the EXIF geolocation metadata notwithstanding fastened.^[98]

While in Guatemala, McAfee asked Chad Essley, an American cartoonist and animator, to set up a blog so he could write about his experience while on the run.^[99]
He then appeared publicly in Guatemala City, where he unsuccessfully sought political aviary.^[100]

On 5 December 2012, he was arrested for illegally inbound Republic of guatemala. Soon afterward, the board reviewing his aviary plea denied information technology and he was taken to a detention middle to await deportation to Belize.^[101]

On 6 December 2012, Reuters and ABC News reported that McAfee had two minor centre attacks in the detention middle and was hospitalized.^[102]
[103]
His lawyer said he had no heart attacks, rather loftier blood pressure level and anxiety attacks.^{[104]
[105]
[106]}
McAfee later said he faked the heart attacks to buy time for his attorney to file a serial of appeals that ultimately prevented his deportation to Belize, thus hastening that regime’southward decision to send him back to the The states.^[107]

On 12 December 2012, McAfee was released and deported to the United States.^[108]

On fourteen Nov 2018, the Circuit Court in Orlando, Florida, refused to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit confronting him for Faull’s death.^[109]
[110]

U.S. tax evasion charges and planned extradition

[edit]

In Jan 2019, McAfee announced that he was on the run from U.S. authorities, and living internationally on a boat post-obit the convening of a g jury to indict him, his wife, and iv of his 2020 Libertarian Party presidential primaries staff on tax evasion charges.^[111]
At the time, the Internal Revenue Service had not independently confirmed the beingness of any such indictment.^[111]

On 5 October 2020, McAfee was arrested in Espana at the request of the United States Section of Justice for tax evasion. The June indictment, which was unsealed upon his arrest, declared he earned millions of dollars from 2014 to 2018, and failed to file income taxation returns.^[112]

On 6 October, the U.Due south. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint farther alleging McAfee and his bodyguard promoted sure initial coin offerings (ICOs) in a fraudulent cryptocurrency pump and dump scheme.^[113]
Information technology claims he presented himself as an impartial investor when he promoted the ICOs, despite allegedly getting paid $23 million in digital assets in return.^[113]

On 5 March 2021, the U.S. Attorney’southward Office for the Southern District of New York formally indicted him and an executive adviser on these charges.^[114]

McAfee was jailed in Kingdom of spain, awaiting extradition to the U.s..^[114]
[115]

On 23 June 2021, the Spanish National Courtroom authorized his extradition to face charges in Tennessee;^[116]
[6]
McAfee is suspected to take committed suicide several hours after the say-so. The New York extradition instance was still pending in a lower Castilian court.^[6]

Personal life

[edit]

McAfee married 3 times. He met his first wife circa 1968 while he was working towards a doctorate at Northeast Louisiana Land Higher and she was an undergraduate pupil.^[24]
Their affair led to his expulsion from the higher.^[24]
He married his second married woman, Judy, a former flight bellboy at American Airlines, circa 1987; they divorced in 2002.^[24]
The night subsequently McAfee arrived in the United States after existence deported from Guatemala in December 2012, he was solicited by and slept with Janice Dyson, so a sex activity worker 30 years his junior in Due south Embankment, Miami Embankment, Florida.^[117]
They began a relationship and married in 2013.^[118]
She claims that he saved her from homo traffickers.^[19]

The couple moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2013.^[119]

In a 2012 article in
Mensa Bulletin, the magazine of the American Mensa, McAfee said developing the offset commercial antivirus program had made him “the most popular hacking target” and “[h]ackers run into hacking me as a badge of accolade”. For his own cybersecurity, he said he had other people buy his computer equipment for him, used pseudonyms for setting up computers and logins, and inverse his IP accost several times a day.^[120]
When asked on another occasion if he personally used McAfee’south antivirus software, he replied: “I take it off[…]information technology’southward too annoying.”^[121]

In 2015, he resided in Lexington, Tennessee.^[85]
In December 2018, he tweeted that he has “47 genetic children”.^{[122]
[123]
[124]
[125]}
His third wife described him in a Father’due south Twenty-four hour period message as “male parent of many, loved by few”.^[19]

Death

[edit]

On 23 June 2021, McAfee was found dead in his prison house cell at the Brians 2 Penitentiary Center [ca]
near Barcelona, hours after the Castilian National Court ordered his extradition to the United States on criminal charges filed in Tennessee by the United States Department of Justice Taxation Division.^[six]
The Catalan Justice Department said “everything indicates” he killed himself by hanging.^{[12]
[126]
[127]
[128]}
An official autopsy confirmed his suicide.^[129]
[14]

McAfee’s death ignited speculation and conspiracy theories well-nigh the possibility that he was murdered. McAfee’south expiry drew comparisons to the circumstances of the death of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex activity trafficking charges.^[130]
[131]
Several times, McAfee claimed if he were ever establish dead past hanging, it would mean he was murdered.^[132]
The twenty-four hours later his death, his lawyer told reporters that while he regularly maintained contact with McAfee in prison, there were no signs of suicidal intent.^[133]
McAfee’south widow reaffirmed this position in her first public remarks since her husband’s death, and also called for a “thorough” investigation.^[134]
[135]

On xiii February 2022, a Spanish court ruled McAfee died by suicide.^[i]

In a Netflix documentary released on Baronial 24, 2022, entitled
Running With the Devil: The Wild Earth of John McAfee, McAfee’s ex-girlfriend, identified as Samantha Herrera, alleged that McAfee faked his expiry to avert tax evasion charges. This allegation has not been proven, notwithstanding.^[136]
[137]

In the media

[edit]

Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee
is a Showtime Networks documentary nearly the portion of McAfee’s life spent in Belize. It began airing in September 2016.^[138]
It covers allegations against him of raping his onetime business partner, Allison Adonizio, and murdering Belizean David Middleton and American expat Gregory Faull.^[139]
[140]
In an interview with Bloomberg’south Pimm Fox and Kathleen Hayes on 8 September 2016, he said these incidents were fabricated, and “Belize is a third-globe banana democracy and you tin can become down at that place and brand whatsoever story you desire if you pay your interviewees, which Showtime did.”^[141]
[142]

In March 2017, it was reported that Glenn Ficarra and John Requa would direct a film about McAfee titled
Rex of the Jungle, written past Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. At various points, Johnny Depp, Michael Keaton, and Seth Rogen were reported to have taken roles and later to have left the project. In Nov 2019, Zac Efron was reported to star as announcer Ari Furman.^{[143]
[144]
[145]
[146]}

On 12 May 2017, McAfee and his wife were interviewed on ABC News’s
20/20
regarding Faull’s declared murder.^[147]

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 Male monarch.^[148]

Books

[edit]

• Computer Viruses, Worms, Data Diddlers, Killer Programs, and Other Threats to Your System. What They Are, How They Work, and How to Defend Your PC, Mac, or Mainframe, (with Colin Haynes) St. Martin’south Press, 1989^[149]
• The Hole-and-corner of the Yamas: Spiritual Guide to Yoga, McAfee Pub, 2001^[150]
• The Fabric of Self: Meditations on Vanity and Love, Woodland Publications, 2001^[151]
• Into the Heart of Truth, Woodland Publications, 2001^[152]
• Beyond the Siddhis. Supernatural Powers and the Sutras of Patanjali, Woodland Publications, 2001^[153]

References

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Farther reading

[edit]

• Davis, Joshua (24 December 2012). “John McAfee Fled to Belize, Merely He Couldn’t Escape Himself”.
  Wired
  . Retrieved
  23 June
  2021.
  

External links

[edit]

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• John McAfee’s website
• John McAfee at IMDb