Why has John McAfee been arrested?

Summary

• Mr McAfee had been arrested at the Barcelona airport after being charged for evading tax in a four-year period between 2014 and 2018.
• The US authorities are waiting for Mr McAfee’s deportation after they accused him of providing misleading information regarding income generation via cryptocurrency recommendations, selling his life story rights, consulting services and other allegations.
• The antivirus software pioneer could potentially face up to 30 years in prison if he is convicted for all the felonies he allegedly made.

John David McAfee, a famous computer programmer and founder of McAfee antivirus software, was arrested in Spain yesterday after being accused of several felonies by the US authorities.

Mr McAfee had been accused of evading tax, after earning millions of dollars in a period from 2014 to 2018.

Spanish authorities reported that McAfee was arrested at the Barcelona airport before boarding a plane to Istanbul, holding a British passport.

Currently, the US authorities are waiting for Mr McAfee’s deportation from Spain. McAfee had not given any comments about the arrest, as he was sent straight to prison after bail for his release was not approved.

Ever since 2012, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Mr McAfee, after he infamously disappeared from his house in Belize after the US authorities started asking questions regarding the murder of his late neighbour.

The pioneer’s name is still a part of the McAfee software, but Mr McAfee himself has not been associated with the app for many years now, since the 1900s to be exact.

What is Mr McAfee accused of?

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed civil charges against Mr McAfee and revealed them on Monday.

Mr McAfee had been accused of failing to lodge his tax for four years (2014-2018) despite the entrepreneur earning a lot of profit from selling rights about his life story, recommending cryptocurrencies, consultations, and public speaking activities, among others. Interestingly, McAfee had provided false consultations and wrong bits of advice about what cryptocurrencies to buy, earning ~A$32.2 million.

The founder of McAfee, LLC allegedly received profit through bank and cryptocurrency trade accounts that other people established in their names. Mr McAfee had also had problems with Internal Revenue Service, due to selling large sums of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, even in other people’s names.

As a part of a separate objection, the SEC accused Jimmy Watson, Mr McAfee’s bodyguard, of certain felonies with trading cryptocurrencies and many others.

What sentence is Mr McAfee facing?

According to the US law, all tax-evading frauds carry a prison term a maximum of five years. Failure to file tax papers has a maximum one-year sentence. After counting all felonies, McAfee could face up to 30 years behind bars.

The SEC filed a 55-page objection against Mr McAfee, stating that the mogul received payments in both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) from several companies.

The ongoing controversy about Mr McAfee’s life

John McAfee started as a role model within the IT business after establishing a multi-billion-dollar antivirus software industry. However, after his neighbour Gregory Faull was discovered dead in Belize, Mr McAfee went ‘underground’, away from the public eye.

He disappeared with a complete disguise and altered looks, which made Faull’s death even more suspicious. Even though Mr McAfee has been suspected of the murder by the US police, he always claimed that he had nothing to do with his neighbour’s death.

Born to a British woman and a US soldier, Mr McAfee experienced a traumatic childhood after his father committed suicide when he was just a 15-year-old boy. His troubled childhood caused alcohol and drug addiction later in life, even though Mr McAfee still managed to have a successful career and become one of the most famous computer developers in the world.

After getting a PhD diploma, Mr McAfee lost it in the 1960s, because of the affair with his undergraduate student that he previously mentored. The couple got married later on, and McAfee started with his successful IT career, as well as severe drug addiction. According to him, his supervisors were frequently on drugs, even in a work environment.

His wife left him due to his drug addiction, which stopped shortly after 1984 when Mr McAfee reportedly took and sold drugs and alcohol for the very last time, after attending AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings.

McAfee antivirus software

Despite a difficult childhood, Mr McAfee got a job at Lockheed Martin company, where he got the inspiration for creating McAfee antivirus app after he discovered that his computer got ‘infected with a virus’. During that period, computer viruses were an enigma and have never appeared in the IT world.

Mr McAfee managed to get rid of the virus, which then led to a self-run business. He has always believed that the antivirus industry will be significant because of cyberattacks and hackers that will always want to attack the public and personal computer data.

The antivirus founder sold his share in business back in 1994. In 2010, Intel bought McAfee app for US$7.7 billion, which was then sold again to TPG in 2016.