COLD OPEN
John McAfee wasn’t just another computer hacker, tech mogul, or presidential candidate; he was also a man on the run. Yes, John McAfee, the creator of McAfee security back in 1987, was now a seriously wanted man.
It started with a police investigation in 2012, and snowballed ever since. Now, McAfee had given up his tech aspirations for evading the state. In October 2020, McAfee was on the move again.
This time, McAfee found himself in Spain with his third wife, Janice. The two were trying to make a discrete exit out of Barcelona and into Turkey- a place where he had a ghost hotel set up and could remain below the radar.
John wanted to be as low profile as possible, so he chartered a private plane to skip the security check and attention that came with it. So far, they had made it to the small aircraft in a warehouse, miles away from the commercial flights.
After throwing their bags under the plane, Janice boarded, but a bang outside caught John’s attention. He felt his breath catch in his lungs as he looked around, frantic.
Did someone know he was here? Could that be someone following them? John tried to be rational- no one should be around for miles. Once the couple left, they would be off the grid forever.
John climbed the short stairs aboard, not wasting more time. Not only was McAfee running from the police in several countries, but he was also dodging a drug cartel that wanted him dead. There was no telling how much longer he’d be safe in Barcelona.
Flying to Turkey? The pilot asked when John stepped inside.
John nodded, that’s right.
The pilot nodded before sitting down and switching buttons on the control panel. The board at the front lit up like a Christmas tree, but the beeping noises set Johns teeth on edge.
He took the open seat across from Janice, facing the front of the plane. As John put his seatbelt on, he felt like he could audibly hear the hands on his watch ticking off seconds.
The pilot started everything up, and the plane groaned to life. As soon as it started up, though, the engine cut off and the control board went dark.
John felt his gut lurch. What’s the problem? He yelled at pilot.
A heartbeat later, men stormed in wearing khaki uniforms with guns aimed at John, shouting in broken English, motioning toward the floor. John felt his pulse race and couldn’t tell how many there were as he lowered onto his belly, side by side with Janice.
Okay, John said, keeping his cool. Todo Bien.
The familiar click of metal cuffs locked around his wrists a second later. Getting arrested in Barcelona wasn’t John’s first run-in with the law, but it could very well be his last.
On this episode: killing computer viruses, poisoning dogs and lots and lots of women. I’m Keith Korneluk and you’re listening to Modem Mischief.
Introduction
You're listening to Modem Mischief. In this series we explore the darkest reaches of the internet. We'll take you into the minds of the world's most notorious hackers and the lives affected by them. We'll also show you places you won't find on Google and what goes on down there. This is the story of John McAfee.
ACT 1
On January 19th, 1986, the first-ever computer virus called “Brain” started making its way around the globe. The virus was the work of two brothers in Pakistan who ran a family computer store in their native country. The brothers initially cooked up the virus to teach some local copycat coders a lesson but it unintentionally spread.
Brain worked by infiltrating a computer with a corrupted floppy disk and slowly rendered the PCs memory capabilities useless. It would also corrupt any other floppy disk inserted into the corrupted system and pass the virus when inserted into another drive.
The virus did no internal damage but drastically slowed down computing time and caused timeouts, which made PC connections unusable. “Brain” was also the first stealth virus to hide its existence- meaning it left no noticeable signs once installed.
It didn’t take long for the floppy disks to start spreading the virus across PCs in the Middle East and Europe before infected floppy disks made their way to computers in the US.
Only a few months after the virus was released into the world, 41-year-old John McAfee was forced to deal with the virus's unexpected repercussions halfway across the world.
One April afternoon in 1986, while working in the computing division at Lockheed in Silicon Valley, McAfee noticed the PC stopped loading destination pages. It would load for minutes on end before timing out altogether. The unstable connection was terrible for large corporations like Lockheed, who relied on the internet to operate.
John tried to call his supervisors from his basement office to alert them immediately, but the line was busy. John waited a few seconds and tried again but got the dial tone again.
Screw it. I'll walk, John mumbled. As soon as he walked onto the office floor, he realized that his whole division was buzzing.
Everyone working with a PC was lamenting the same issues. Strangely, all the PCs were losing memory space, taking much longer to load, and some were timing out altogether. Another tech on the floor pointed out that memory capacity declined on every PC even though no files were added. Something was just eating up the space, rendering it inaccessible.
He was getting nowhere with the PCs at work. Impulsive and inquisitive, John left his office and sped over to neighboring Stanford University where he bullied his way onto one of the computers in the tech lab by waving around his Lockheed ID. Once he accessed the online forums, John discovered that he wasn’t the only one experiencing computer problems.
After scouring the news and bulletins, John realized that all the symptoms the computers at Lockheed were experiencing could be traced back to the Brain virus.
McAfee wasn't any kind of computer genius. Everything he knew about computers he had learned from his time at Roanoke College. Between 1963 and 1967, McAfee developed an affinity for technology along with a habit of drinking whiskey and snorting drugs. Sometimes simultaneously.
The drug habit continued after John graduated college and started his career leading the cutting-edge of technological innovation. With NASA, John worked on the Apollo program, the third United States human spaceflight program that successfully prepared and landed the first humans on the Moon.
John innovated at places like Xerox and General Electric before moving on to a job in St. Louis for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. What started as experimentation and expansion quickly turned into an addiction. At every location, John reported that he not only took drugs but that they were common in the workplace.
While working for the Mississippi Railroad, McAfee’s drug problem finally caught up to him. His first wife had just left him, and John comforted himself by snorting an entire baggie of drugs while on the job. When colleagues later found him, John was shaking in a corner behind a garbage can while the computer spit out train schedules to high heaven. John never went back to work there again.
However, by the time the Brain virus arrived, McAfee had been clean for a year and clear-headed enough to formulate a plan. The virus was a setback for Lockheed, but it was an opportunity for McAfee. He could clearly see a solution to the virus problem and wanted to test his hypothesis.
John called up an old coding buddy from college, Tim, who was surprised to hear John's voice on the other end of the phone. Not being one for small talk, John immediately made Tim a proposition.
Listen, this Brain virus that's going around, John said, after confirming that Tim had heard of it, I think we can stop it.
You want to stop the virus? Tim huffed. He knew John as an alcoholic and a junkie, not as a computer genius or a businessman.
John was persistent. It's just code, for Christ's sake! John exclaimed. If they wrote the code that destroys the computer system, we could write the code that restores it.
Tim skeptically agreed.
Six months later, the duo had created software that would identify stealth viruses and write code that would undo the internal damage they caused. McAfee started his company, McAfee Associates, and started selling the program.
By the end of the 1980s, McAfee Associates was making $5 million a year.
The company continued to climb in 1992 when a new virus, Michelangelo, began threatening public and private PC users everywhere.
The Michelangelo virus was first discovered in 1991. The virus remained inactive on computers until March 6, when the virus would come alive and prevent the computer from starting up. Users wouldn’t be able to retrieve anything stored on the computer, and once activated, it prevented computers from starting up.
McAfee stated that as many as 5 million computers worldwide would be affected by Michelangelo. In a panic to protect their devices, nearly every family and hardware store with a computer bought McAfee anti-virus protection before the impending March 6th attack in 1992. Only 20,000 computers were ultimately affected.
Nevertheless, John rooted himself into the industry as a tech genius, and McAfee Associates became a multimillion-dollar business. Just as quickly as McAfee rose to fame and notoriety, he disappeared.
In 1992 John sold McAfee Associates and his majority shares of the company for $100 million two years later. McAfee Anti-virus Security had become a household name, but its creator wanted no part of the work.
The following years should have led McAfee to a quiet life on the beach, retired and writing books. But McAfee wasn't ready to slow down.
In the early 2000s, McAfee divorced his second wife, sold all his possessions, and moved to Belize- a tiny island in the Caribbean.
There McAfee lived in a picturesque villa surrounded by lush jungle and crystal water. He soon began to populate his island get-a-way with all his favorite things: dogs, drugs, alcohol, armed body guards and a haram of seven young women. You know, the basics.
The group at John’s compound had gotten along great until November 21st, 2012, when the Belizean police showed up at John's front door.
What's all this about? John demanded. He answered the door without a shirt and refused to put one on when the officer suggested it.
This is about your neighbor, Gregory Faull, the officer said, he was shot to death in his home last night.
John's gasped with surprise, and the officer continued. Did you hear anything? See anything?
John shook his head and shrugged. I was here all night with the girls, and we didn't hear a peep. Isn't that right, girls? John looked over his shoulder at the women donning string bikinis stretched across his expensive leather couches.
A serenade of affirmative grunts came from the living room.
You and Mr. Faull never argued recently? the officer asked, taking a step toward John.
John had fought with his neighbor. In fact, John was almost certain that Greg had poisoned his dogs two nights ago. Greg was always bitching and moaning about the dogs running around their shared beach, and the two argued. Greg swore he would kill the dogs, and the next day John’s brood of pups were poisoned dead. But John wasn't telling the police any of that.
No, nothing like that, John lied.
He hated the police. In 2008, John refused to pay a $2 million donation to the Belizean government, and ever since then, problems started cropping up. First, the police raided his home, and now they wanted to talk to him about a strange death? Maybe it was paranoia from all the bath salts, but John couldn't help but feel as though he had a target freshly painted on his back.
It’s time you left, John said, and if you want to come back, bring a warrant. I know my rights, dammit!
Without waiting for the officers to speak, John stepped inside and slammed the door. He tried to play it cool but could feel the worried eyes of all the girls on him.
Nothing to worry about, John said, trying to ease the tension the police created. Neive, he barked, grab me some cocaine, love?
Neive did as she was told, and John tried to shake the visit from his mind. The police, he told himself, had nothing on him. Even if he was responsible for the crime— which he wasn't– there wasn't anything the police could do.
John tried to let the incident go, but he still had a bad feeling lingering in his gut. The next day, John sent the girls out of the house, packed up everything he could, and fled to Guatemala. The Belizean police, however, were hot on his trail.
ACT 2
Just as John made his way into Guatemala, the Belizean police searched John’s home. John was nowhere to be found, and it appeared as though the home had been cleaned out. The police in Belize put a warrant out for his arrest, naming McAfee as a person of interest in the death of Gregory Faull.
Once arriving in Guatemala, John didn't know what lengths the Belizean government would go to find John and pin Faull’s death on him. Even as John tried to remain anonymous, he worried that he would be recognized.
John knew something was wrong when the uniformed officers in Guatemala started to appear on every street corner and whispered into their radios when he passed by them. John’s skin was crawling, and he knew that he needed to get off the Guatemalan streets— and fast.
Then, an officer finally caught his eye. Sir, can you please stop for a moment? The officer instructed more than asked. John knew better than to trust the police.
Instead of stopping and talking to the officer, John took one step and clutched at his chest. He held his breath and felt all the blood rushing to his face as he stumbled down to his knees.
Help me, he choked, spit flying from his mouth and tears leaked from his bloodshot eyes.
The officer's face went pale, and he grabbed the walking on his shoulder. We need a medic; a civilian is having a heart attack!
John felt his vision getting black and spotty from the lack of air. No longer able to hold himself up, he collapsed to the ground. All the sounds seemed like John was hearing them from underwater, and he could feel someone pushing up against his chest and a faint strobe of flashing lights.
When John came to again, he found himself surrounded by Americans in a United States hospital. The Guatemalan police had taken McAfee to a local hospital and diagnosed McAfee with a heart attack. The hospital sent John back home to have a battery of heart testing done, and John was anxious to leave the case in Belize in his rearview.
The police case and John's dramatic exit from Guatemala kicked up a flurry of press interest in the retired tech mogul and his life off the grid. Many media outlets speculated that John used his health scare to evade the police in Belize, and the public refused to drop the case.
Relishing his second coming of fame, John took to talk with his fans. In a Twitter post, John addressed rumors that he faked his heart attack to get out of Guatemala, finally putting to bed any speculation; he had absolutely faked it.
The Twitter post read:
Next Question: Did I really fake a heart attack while in Guatemala.
A: Yes.
Why?
A: I was being deported back to Belize at noon. My lawyers needed until 2:00 to file a stay of deportation.
I told them: "Don't worry. Get the Stay. I got the rest."
As bold as he was online, John lived his life in the shadows. To keep himself away from prying eyes, he purchased a compound in Colorado that he turned into his private safehouse. The only people allowed onto the compound were any number of John's dealers. He couldn't go without the drugs and guns, after all, and the prostitutes he regularly hired.
There was one sex worker that John had liked: a woman named Janice. John met Janice outside a hotel room in Miami in December 2012, after his run-in with the Guatemalan government. Sex being the furthest thing on his mind, John solicited Janice. But not for any hanky panky. He paid her...$2,000 to spend the night...to spoon him.
SFX: Record scratch, music cuts
Now, at Modem Mischief, we don’t kink shame. But two large seems like a hell of a lot for just cuddling.
SFX: Music resumes
Shortly after meeting Janice, the couple was smitten. She was older than the women that John housed back in Belize, but she was more confident and comfortable in her skin than the others. She didn't judge him or ask too many questions, and she simply talked to him.
It didn't happen all at once, but slowly, something about Janice seemed to stick with John. He liked having her around, and he knew that there weren't many people he could trust as much as he trusted her.
A month after meeting, John proposed to Janice, who readily agreed to be his wife. The two had a quick engagement and married only another few months later. Janice was John's third wife, and he was ready to make the title stick.
Even though John finally felt like he had found love in his life again, he started to worry that someone was spying on him. It started near the end of 2013 when John discovered the door to his gun room open one afternoon. It was strange, but John shrugged it off.
Then, John noticed that his small locked safe wasn't in the place where he left it. It usually sat under his side of the bed with all the dials turned to the number one. One evening, he decided to check it.
When he did, the safe wasn't flush against the wall, and the numbers were all left on random digits. Immediately, John felt the hair on his arms stand up. Not only had someone been in his house, but they had also been searching for his gun.
What could this mean? Was someone watching him? Making him think that he was going crazy? Whatever the intruder was trying to do, it was working.
By July of 2014, John could feel his paranoia rising, and his mental health only seemed to get more concerning the more he distanced himself from the world. As time wore on, John's health began to decline. He was having stomach aches, throwing up, and started dropping weight.
The apparent explanation for John's symptoms could have been stress-related. He had, after all, been worrying himself sick since he had returned to the United States. Always making sure he wasn't being followed or tracked. But as his symptoms got worse, he decided to consult a doctor that he trusted, Dr. Mark.
Dr. Mark reluctantly made a house call to John's Colorado home and gave him a battery of tests. He performed external physical tests that seemed inconclusive, along with internal tests on John's bloodwork. Dr. Mark didn't have any answers but promised to call John soon with any results.
John was forced to sit and wait for the doctor to call him while on a diet of brothy soups. Now, nearly bed-ridden, John relied on his wife Janice to help him around the house and bring him all his meals.
A week later, Dr. Mark phoned John with his test results. John wasn't falling ill with cancer or high blood pressure, but with poisoning. The doctor found arsenic in John's blood which meant that someone was trying to kill him.
In a furious rage, John went to his chef with steam coming out of his ears. Did you do this? He hacked, spit flying from his mouth.
The chef put his hands up, quivering in protest. I swear, he yelled, it wasn't me!
Seeing red, John pulled a knife from the butcher block and held the sharpened blade up to the chef's throat. His eyes were black and rabid. I'll ask you one last time, who is poisoning me?
The chef had tears welling in his eyes as John moved the blade closer to his throat.
Stop! Janice cried. She was standing behind John in the entryway into the kitchen. Her face was dark, and her voice sad.
John looked back at Janice, confused. He tried to kill me. Or he knows who is trying.
It was me, Janice said. John could hear that she was sniffling.
The anger instantly faded from his body, and he dropped the blade from the chef's throat. John's hand was shaking, and the chef ran from the room in tears. Janice walked over to him, but John moved away. His head was spinning, and he didn't understand. She was the one trying to kill him. His wife?
I-I don't understand, John stuttered.
Please sit down, Janice asked through her tears. Let me explain.
Just start fucking explaining, John yelled.
Janice did explain. She went all the way back to the beginning, to the day when she and John met in 2012. Janice told him that a drug cartel hired her pimp to get John's tech fortune. Her pimp tasked her with getting John to marry Janice to kill him for the inheritance.
Everything started making sense to John; the timing of their relationship, the rapid pace, and the strange signs that someone had been tampering around the house. He wanted to be furious but as he looked at Janice, slumped over the kitchen table in tears, his heart softened.
You have to believe me, Janice sobbed; I didn't have a choice. They were going to kill my son if I didn't listen.
John watched her sob and felt his heartbreak. He had trusted Janice with his life, and she had tried to end his. But he knew that it wasn’t Janice’s fault. It wasn't like she had decided to kill him all on her own.
Now, John was faced with a choice. He could either dump Janice and force her to go back to her life as a struggling sex worker, or he could forgive her.
Shh, John said, patting her hand. It's not safe here. Pack a bag, and we'll leave tonight.
John loved and trusted Janice. He knew she would never hurt him unless she were being forced. One thing was now obvious; someone wanted John dead, and his suspicions had been entirely valid all along.
ACT 3
For well over a decade, John was flush with cash. Most of his money had been allocated to drugs, guns, armed bodyguards, sex workers, and modifying his properties, so they were more like military bunkers.
Between the sale of his company and his stocks shortly after that, John had plenty of money to live a lavish lifestyle for the rest of his life. John’s old habits, however, reared their ugly head. He was like a Dr. Jerkyll and Mr. Hyde of the technology world. Without drugs, John was curious, intelligent, and innovative. When he was high or drunk, on the other hand, he was explosive, erratic, and paranoid.
From the time John gave up his company to 2016, he founded an instant messaging system, a yoga retreat and an “aero-trekking” experience— also known as engine-powered hang-gliding. He also bought several multi-million dollar properties in Colorado, Hawaii, and Tennessee.
With the drugs, guns, and extravagant life on social media presence John upheld, the public assumed that John was merely living off his old tech fortune and some good investments, but those close to the tech mogul knew that John was nearing flat-broke.
The fortune that John asserted everyone was after was nearly depleted. Instead of looking to his old company to gain employment in his time of need, he started posting Youtube videos speaking out against McAfee Associates.
In 2013, John uploaded a Youtube video titled "How to Uninstall McAfee Anti-virus from your computer"- a statement that will tell everyone exactly how the tech mogul feels being associated with the McAfee company.
The video begins with McAfee in a silk robe who begins reading the worst reviews of his antivirus software and concludes by reading the urban diction definition which states that the software is: A barely passable virus-scanning program that updates at the worst possible times. Tends to render your computer completely useless whenever it starts an update (which it doesn't ask to start and you can't cancel or pause)," the software millionaire, clad in a silk dressing gown, reads, McAfee updates at horrible times, almost like the creators want you to die.
In the video, McAfee (who ends up naked) is surrounded by scantily clad women, snorting white powder from boxes with handwritten "Special K" labels.
Although I've had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years, I still get volumes of mail asking, 'How do I uninstall this software?' McAfee says in the short clip. I have no idea, McAfee admits, then lights a cigarette with a $100 bill.
Even though McAfee should have been desperately grovelling for help on the doorsteps of his affluent peers, he was known for coming up with unique solutions to pad his pockets with extra cash.
In 2016 McAfee sold the rights to his life story to be turned into a documentary for a small payout.
The same year, he wanted to start writing a book but didn’t have the capital to pay the ghostwriter on the project. Instead, the writer published the story himself and kept most of the royalties as payment, with John getting a meager percentage.
Hustling ghostwriters and being filmed was fine for now, but it wouldn’t help John get back in the saddle and replenish his rapidly dwindling supply of money. No money meant no drugs, and John was determined to find a solution.
By October 2016, John began promoting cryptocurrency on his Twitter and charged new brands more than $100,000 per tweet to publicize initial currency offerings. John’s new monetary scheme quickly caught the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who began to investigate him for tax evasion and hiding assets.
The investigation didn’t stop McAfee from charging ahead with his life plans. In fact, the investigation only fueled McAfee’s conspiratory mind and desire to get involved in politics.
Everyone was out to get McAfee, whose paranoia was legendary.
On Twitter, McAfee claimed that a powerful drug cartel controlled the Belizean government, and everyone involved wanted him dead for refusing to pay the cartel $2 million extortion money.
McAfee asserted that the team working on his documentary was out to screw him by having participants sign false documents.
The US government was out to get him because he refused to pay his federal taxes and allegedly held classified government data.
McAfee never provided any proof or evidence of his claims, but they constantly permeated his thoughts.
The injustice McAfee faced in the political system launched his interest in politics, and in November 2016, McAfee announced that he would be running for president while on the run from several government entities.
When he failed to get the Libertarian nomination, John retreated to the shadows to lick his wounds. As much as he loved the digital spotlight, he preferred a solitary life.
By January 2018, the US government had been keeping their eyes on McAfee in an attempt to track his movements and, more importantly, the movement of all his assets. While claiming he had none, the tech mogul continued to jet-set around the world and pose with thousands of dollars worth of guns, drugs, and boats for the internet.
The Federal government knew that McAfee was tiptoeing on the edge of breaking the law if he wasn’t actively breaking it already. They just needed the proper evidence to put him behind bars before anyone else close to the retired tech star ended up dead.
As US authorities probed McAfee’s finances in 2018, McAfee lived at a ghost hotel, an unofficial lodging arranged by one of his hitman-turned-bodyguards. While in hiding, McAfee was also alleged to be running a secret bitcoin farm on the Catalan coast.
McAfee knew the US government was closing in on him, and In response to the investigation into his affairs, the tech mogul tweeted: I’ve collected files on corruption in governments. For the first time, I’m naming names and spe cifics. I’ll begin with a corrupt CIA agent and two Bahamian officials. Coming today. If I’m arrested or disappear, 31+ terrabytes of incriminating data will be released to the press.
No other posts followed the threat.
Two years later, in June 2020, the United States government finally filed formal criminal charges against John McAfee. The IRS alleged that McAfee failed to report millions of dollars worth of payments from promoting cryptocurrencies and speakin g engagements.
John wasn’t surprised by the charges, but he was ready to get out of the public spotlight for good this time.
The next day John and Janice set sail on his boat named The Great Mystery and began to head toward the Caribbean. The plan was to drift between islands, spending most of his time out on the water.
With the official criminal charges issued by the United States, John now had proof the US government was targeting him. There were plenty of other millionaires who didn’t pay taxes. Why were they obsessed with finding and catching him?
He wondered if the government was in cahoots with the drug cartel that wanted John dead. It seemed crazy, but there was no conspiracy theory too far-fetched for John’s anxious mind to believe. With John’s mind consumed with anxious thoughts, he failed to notice that the boat had officially crossed over in the Dominican Republic’s waters, and they were waiting for him.
The police in the DR had gotten a tip that a big shipment of guns was headed their way. Whether McAfee was their intended target or not, the boat was surrounded as soon as The Great Mystery crossed over into Dominican waters. The police found plenty of guns on board, and the group on board was arrested.
The situation seemed like bad luck, but John knew it was really an act of warfare. Deep in his gut, John knew that the US government was responsible for his arrest. He also knew that more attacks would be coming; getting arrested in the Dominican was only the start, and McAfee insisted the US was sending him a message: we’re coming for you.
John and Janice spent the night in jail before being released the following day. Any country that maintained positive relations with the US government had explicit instructions to hand over McAfee if and when he surfaced. The couple made their way out of the DR and started moving clandestinely around Europe.
With Federal Agents threatening to smoke John out at every turn, it quickly became impossible to sneak in and out of European countries. The plan to stay on the run wouldn’t work for long.
A short week after McAfee’s release from the Dominican jail, McAfee was tracked and finally arrested in October 2020 while attempting to fly out of the Barcelona airport.
Spain, John knew, had a good relationship with the United States, and he figured they would be eager to hand McAfee over. But maybe, just maybe, John could find a way out of this mess. If he could come up with a little bit more money, he could bribe the Spanish guard with some hush money and make a run for it.
The outcome for McAfee, however, was looking bleak. If his bribery plan failed, McAfee would only have two things left to do; appeal his case and pray.
ACT 4
John sat in his Spanish prison cell for nine months while waiting for his lawyer, the Spanish police, and the US government to dictate his fate. McAfee felt powerless and frustrated.
Each day that passed was another day that McAfee felt the walls closing in on him and more eyes inside the prison seemed to look at him with dollar signs in their eyes. Any one of them could be a hit-man, ready to end John’s life.
To add to McAfee’s paranoia, every US agent McAfee spoke with, whether in his cell or by phone, that his death was imminent. McAfee took to his personal Twitter account to let the public know that the US government was setting him up and that if he was found dead, it was by someone else’s hand.
McAfee was so sure that someone was out to get him that he took every precaution he could. He even took to Twitter, saying things like, If I suicide myself, I didn’t. I was whacked. Check my right arm. Included with the tweet was a photo of his bicep, sporting fresh ink that read “$WHACKD” — a reference to the Mafia-style assassination he was expecting.
McAfee sounded like a rambling lunatic looking for a last-minute escape, and he was. There was nothing that John wouldn’t do to take his freedom back and get himself out of the cramped cell he was condemned to.
Meanwhile, deliberations over John’s future between Spain and the US lasted nine months. In June 2021, a Spanish court decided that McAfee would be extradited to the US to face his federal crimes and stand civil trial for the wrongful death of his Belizean neighbor and American expatriate, Gregory Faull.
The news shocked McAfee, who was almost 75 years old. The US penalty for his crimes would be at least 30 years, meaning that McAfee would be spending the rest of his life behind bars. McAfee appealed the decision in an attempt to have his fate overturned.
On June 20th, Janice posted a cryptic tweet about how much she loved her husband and worried about his impending death. John continued to Tweet that he would meet a similar end as the notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He and Janice knew it was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, got to McAfee. His time was running out.
Days ticked by and just when McAfee thought that his torment would never end, he received an update from his lawyer.
John McAfee wasn't spared.
On June 23rd, 2021, the Spanish government released a statement that they would be handing McAfee over to face the 10-count US indictment waiting for him at home.
McAfee, who had exhausted all his appeals, resigned. The decision to hand him over was final.
The next morning, a group of ten US agents went to retrieve McAfee from his Spanish cell. When they unlocked the heavy metal door and flung it open, what they saw made the agents stare with shock.
McAfee was hanging from the dangling light of his cell, dead of an apparent suicide. Agents claimed that John had hung himself with a bedsheet.
Without another word, John McAfee’s cases were closed. John’s estate was ordered to pay $25 million to Gregory Faull’s estate and just like that, the curious case was entirely closed.
The public, entranced and enthralled by the case of John McAfee were left to wonder about John's sudden and mysterious end.
Had John finally taken the ultimate act of control by ending his roller coaster of a life on his own terms instead of rotting in an American jail cell? Or, had someone finally caught up to the tech mogul to end his life- just like John had predicted?
John’s wife and the public still have questions but nearly seven months after John’s death, no one has answers and it’s likely that the tech mogul’s demise will remain as much a mystery as his life.
I’m Keith Korneluk, and you’re listening to Modem Mischief.
Credits
Thanks for listening to Modem Mischief. Don’t forget to hit the follow button in your favorite podcast app right now so you don’t miss an episode. This show is an independent production and is wholly supported by you, our listeners and the best way to support the show is to share it. Tell your friends, your enemies, write it on a hundred dollar bill and use it on your next coke binge. And another way to support us is on Patreon. For as little as $5 a month you’ll receive an ad-free version of the show plus monthly bonus episodes exclusive to subscribers. Modem Mischief is brought to you by Mad Dragon Productions and is created, produced and hosted by me: Keith Korneluk. This episode is written and researched by Lauren Minkoff. Edited, mixed and mastered by Greg Bernhard aka The Most Progressive Man West of the Mississippi. The theme song “You Are Digital” is composed by Computerbandit. Sources for this episode are available on our website at modemmischief.com. And don’t forget to follow us on social media at @modemmischief. Thanks for listening!