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Updated June 28th, 2021 at 09:07 IST

John McAfee death: Who is the tech mogul whose life and death is shrouded in mystery?

Controversial antivirus software magnate John McAfee, who had had multiple run-ins with the US law, has died at 75 on June 25. He was awaiting extradition to US

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Software mogul and controversial business leader John McAfee, who had multiple run-ins with law enforcement around the world, died at the age of 75 on June 25. McAfee was reportedly awaiting extradition in a Spanish prison after being charged with tax evasion in the United States last year. His death which came as a surprise to many is understood to be a suicide.

Who is John McAfee?

John McAfee grew up in Roanoke, Virginia in the US. According to one of his published works, McAfee's father was abusive and an alcoholic and reportedly killed himself when he was 15 years old. McAfee admitted in his books that he had indulging in heavy drinking while still a student at Roanoke College. After graduating, he began a PhD in Mathematics in the same college, however, was fired soon after reports emerged that he had an affair with a student.

McAfee's dependency on drugs

Over the course of his career, McAfee would repeatedly get fired from all his jobs, sometimes for smoking marijuana in the workplace, on some occasions for taking LSD or a dose of DMT, which he considered to be the strongest of all psychedelics, however, with time, not only did he become an addict but he also felt the effects of the drugs were wearing off soon. He would continue to push his limits and sometimes even snort a whole bag. 
'Within an hour my mind was shattered,' McAfee said in an interview once, while adding that it never fully healed after that. Eventually, in 1983, a therapist connected him to Alcoholics Anonymous, and he claimed to have been sober ever since.

After falling back in line, he started working as a coder at Lockheed, a defence contractor and in 1986, while working at Lockheed, a sibling duo in Pakistan launched the world's first PC virus; McAfee's life would never be the same after that.

The software tycoon grabbed the opportunity and launched McAfee Associates to create software to protect computers from possibly virus threats. He was hugely successful and decided to make the program available for free online. And by 1990, millions of computers were relying on it, with companies paying $5 million annually to license it, ultimately making McAfee an overnight celebrity and a tech mogul.

McAfee's global expansion

In the years that followed, McAfee became a fixture in the media, hyping up the threat of computer viruses. As demand for his product soared through the roof, McAfee Associates applied for an IPO in 1992 and was then reportedly worth $80 million. In 1994, after stepping away from management positions, McAfee sold his shares for a pretty penny and left the company.

Free from work, McAfee became an adrenaline junkie and then a yogi, setting up a yoga institute in Colorado. He ten created an adventure sports resort in New Mexico. Snapped up cars and properties around the world and lived life king-size as a tech mogul.

But trouble started mounting again, from 2008, as McAfee faced multiple lawsuits, and claiming to have hit hard times during the recession and having reduced his $100 million fortune to a mere $4 million, he sold all his properties in a brazen rush and moved to the Central American island country of Belize, where the mysterious part of his life began.

Why did John McAfee move to Belize?

McAfee was quoted from his interviews later explaining his decision to relocate to Belize. He said that because Belizians spoke English, the country had great beaches and 'raw and in-your-face'. But most importantly, it was out of reach from US lawsuits and they did not have an extradition treaty with the North American country which meant that no investigation agency could reach him.

In Belize, McAfee, free from prying eyes, set up a cigar manufacturing unit, undertook coffee distribution hubs and even started water taxi companies. Among his grand exploits, McAfee also launched a company with the sole purpose of finding medicinal herbs and plants from the rainforests to mass-produce and sell them as medicine.

Unholy partnerships

He worked with young people from the country and was often influenced by their enthusiasm. As he built this mystery "herbal medicine" company, he grew increasingly paranoid. He hired an army of police and equipped them with M16s and pistols and soon became a vigilante, pulling over what he thought were suspicious cars, hunting for drug dealers and even threatening the families of criminals. 

Paranoid that he was, not only did he scout for synthetic drugs and other narcotic substances but he also was on the prowl for possible competition. This is why he turned his production units into a pharma company that was manufacturing antibiotics. He even hired local security guards and acquired an arsenal enough to sustain a small-scale army.

As he expanded his business and kept recurring more security to fortify his factories, his dogs were found dead under mysterious circumstances. His neighbour also was found dead, shot in the head. The police named him a person for interest in the investigation and he soon fled to Mexico and eventually Guatemala, where a reporter working with Vice documentaries, accidentally shared his location, resulting in his arrest.

McAfee was deported to Belize but not charged, and largely fell off the radar. A US court later ordered him to pay $25 million to the neighbour's family he is suspected of having murdered. He absconded again following the court order and was only arrested again in 2015, under the charge of DUI first and then for possession of high-calibre weapons in the Dominican Republic. All this while, he toured around the world in secrecy and made money promoting cryptocurrencies on Twitter.

However, in October 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain while boarding a flight to Turkey. And this time the US had charged him with a number of crimes including tax evasion. At that time he had tweeted, "Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine".

John McAfee continued tweeting from his personal account while in prison, updating his family and friends about his life inside the Spanish jail. And sure as rain, on June 23, John McAfee was found dead in what authorities call a suicide after Spain agreed to extradite him to the US. The life of John McAfee has ended, but its mystique and the untold stories of what went on in his factories and medicinal labs in Belize and his prison days in Spain will continue to be debated for years to come.

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Published June 28th, 2021 at 09:07 IST

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