John McAfee: Inside The Chaotic Life Of The Enigmatic Cybersecurity Legend

John McAfee was no odd man.

He established himself as a pacesetter within the cybersecurity business by creating one of many largest antivirus corporations ever.

What occurred subsequent, although, is what actually propelled him into the general public eye.

The American software program mogul, who was born in Britain, did stints at NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Xerox earlier than releasing McAfee VirusScan in 1987.

As a results of VirusScan, a multibillion greenback business was born within the pc world. He lastly bought the platform to know-how large Intel for greater than $7.6 billion in 2011.

To this present day, there are 500 million customers of this system that bears his identify.

Image: Business Insider
John McAfee: His Successful & Tumultuous Life

McAfee has been on the run from the U.S. authorities for a very long time, spending a few of that point on a megayacht. Both the New York cryptocurrency fraud case and the Tennessee tax evasion case led to his indictment.

He grew to become a “individual of curiosity” in a homicide investigation in Belize after his $100 million fortune collapsed to lower than $4 million within the wake of the 2008 monetary disaster.

McAfee spent a great deal of time residing in Belize. When authorities got here on the lookout for him to ask him a few murder in his neighborhood in 2012, he ran away. They concluded that he was not a suspect.

The anti-virus pioneer claimed to have fathered no less than 47 youngsters in 2018. After that, he got here again to the States and ran for president twice (in 2016 and 2020).

The Hot-Headed Visionary & Cybersecurity Legend

John McAfee was not the stereotypical tech entrepreneur in any means. He was hasty and careless, typically getting himself into some type of hassle.

After the Spanish excessive court docket permitted his extradition to the United States on tax evasion allegations, he dedicated suicide in a Barcelona jail in June of final yr.

According to McAfee’s lawyer, Javier Villalba, he took his personal life by hanging himself after spending 9 months behind bars.

Despite John McAfee’s proper to enchantment his sentence, Villalba mentioned that he couldn’t survive an prolonged time frame in a jail facility.

John McAfee authored a number of books on yoga and spirituality.

In 2012, he advised Wired that his father was an alcoholic and an abuser to his mother.

His Father Died By Suicide

According to Wired and different stories, when McAfee was 15, his father died by suicide.

John met his spouse, Janice McAfee, when she solicited him as a prostitute whereas he was hiding from the authorities, he mentioned.

My coronary heart aches for you each day however I hope that wherever you might be, you might be resting within the peace you deserved to have on this life. I like you John. #JohnMcAfeeDidNotKillHimself #LegendsNeverDie#GoneButNEVERForgotten pic.twitter.com/mIwYX3fqbw

— Janice McAfee (@theemrsmcafee) September 18, 2022

Today, Janice posted the next tweet:

“Don’t let John’s story, his work and loss of life grow to be forgotten. Help me strain Spanish officers to take motion to launch his physique.”

Samantha Herrera, John McAfee’s ex-girlfriend, claims he didn’t die in jail however escaped and is now dwelling within the U.S.

“My coronary heart aches for you each day however I hope that wherever you might be, you might be resting within the peace you deserved to have on this life. I like you John,” his spouse mentioned.

A bit greater than a yr after his loss of life, which was genuinely stranger than fiction, McAfee’s story has been reworked right into a Netflix documentary referred to as Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee.

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