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The creator of McAfee antivirus software, John McAfee found dead in the Barcelona prison cell. Prison officials have found him hanging, according to police sources, who say they treat the event as a suicide.
Javier Villalba, John Mcfee’s lawyer has told the Reuters news agency, “the cause of death is suicide and that McAfee has hanged himself in his cell. The businessman has not been able to bear spending more time in prison”.
The lawyer has pointed out that “this is the result of a cruel system that had no reason to keep this man in jail for so long”.
As explained by the Justice Department, the prison surveillance professionals and the prison medical services get involved to carry out recovery, but could not save his life. Its been eight months, the businessman had been imprisoned.
The Strange Life of John McAfee
John David McAfee started McAfee Associates in 1987 and led an eccentric life after selling his stake in the antivirus software company named after him in the early 1990s.
McAfee twice made long-shot runs for the US presidency and was a participant in Libertarian Party presidential debates in 2016. He dabbled in yoga, ultralight aircraft, and producing herbal medications.
McAfee turned his skills to a series of programming jobs with some of the biggest tech organisations of the time including Nasa, General Electric, Siemens, Univac and Xerox. He worked out a way to disinfect the computers and then spread the cure via the bulletin board system, a precursor to the web.
McAfee Arrested in Spain Over Tax Evasion Charges
The report says John Mcfee was arrested when he was about to take a plane to Turkey. The arrest followed charges the same month in Tennessee for evading taxes after failing to report income from promoting cryptocurrencies while he did consulting work, made speaking engagements and sold the rights to his life story for a documentary. The criminal charges carried a prison sentence of up to 30 years.
Further, he was accused of buying other goods on behalf of third parties, including a yacht. The businessman used Twitter to promote the purchase of cryptocurrencies among his followers without warning that he was making money from it. With the operations, he allegedly pocketed 23 million dollars (about 19.5 million euros).
McAfee was accused of tax evasion in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The Prosecutor’s Office was in favor of his extradition for those exercises, but not for the years 2014 and 2015, for which the US justice also demanded him.
On October 15, 2020, already imprisoned in Barcelona, McAfee tweeted: “I am satisfied here. I have friends. The food is good. Everything is fine. Know that if I hang up, Epstein-style, it won’t be my fault ”.
A McAfee company spokesperson, Jaime Le said in a statement: “Although John McAfee founded the company, he has not been associated with our company in any capacity for over 25 years. That said, our thoughts go to his family and those close to him.”
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