The story of John McAfee – From creating world’s biggest antivirus to being found dead in a Spanish prison

John McAfee – known around the world as an embracer of sex, drugs and guns apart from being a cybersecurity pioneer of his times is now dead. John McAfee is considered the inventor of computer Antivirus software. In the 1980s, the man founded McAfee Associates, which went on to become the first major antivirus company. Apart from being what can be called a father of commercial antivirus softwares, John McAfee was also a fugitive with a battery of legal cases pending against him from the United States to Central American to the Caribbean. Now, John McAfee is dead.

McAfee was found dead in his jail cell near Barcelona on Wednesday. His death came just hours after a Spanish court announced that it had approved his extradition to the United States to face tax charges punishable by decades in prison, authorities said. The antivirus pioneer – who thought way ahead of his time, was arrested by Spanish authorities in October 2020. The arrest came after the US state of Tennessee charged him with avoiding taxes for four years, and failing to report his income made through cryptocurrencies, consulting work, and selling his life rights in the form of a documentary.

McAfee’s suicide came in the backdrop of his extradition to the United States being approved, and him saying that he would spend the rest of his life in a prison cell in America because the hunt for him is politically motivated. In 2012, McAfee was wanted and named a ‘person of interest’ in connection with the death of his neighbour Gregory Viant Faull, with whom he was said to share a beef.

In 2012, a research facility owned by McAfee called QuorumEx, based in Belize, which promised to make herbal-based antibiotics was raided by the police department’s Gang Suppression Unit on suspicion that he was manufacturing methamphetamine – a common drug to which junkies are addicted. In July 2019, McAfee was arrested in the Dominican Republic after he and five others were suspected of travelling on a yacht carrying high-calibre weapons, ammunition, and military-style gear.

By no estimates was John McAfee’s life uneventful or boring. In 2015, McAfee announced that he would run for President of the United States as the candidate from a newly announced Cyber party, but later that year, he switched to the Libertarian Party. Not many know, but McAfee ran again for the US Presidency in the 2020 election.

What resulted in McAfee’s life taking the turn of that resembling a fugitive? It was in the 1980s that he founded McAfee Associates. In 1994, however, McAfee resigned from the company, subsequent to which it was bought by Intel for $7.7 billion in 2010. After the founder’s exit from the company, McAfee Associates sold all of the man’s stakes.

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John McAfee was also among the first individuals to invent instant messaging. In the mid-90s, he founded a company behind PowWow, which provided an instant message and chat programme for Windows operating systems. By 2009, however, McAfee’s finances had depleted and he was left with just $4 million.

Nishay Sanan, the Chicago-based attorney defending him on multiple cases, said by phone that McAfee “will always be remembered as a fighter.” “He tried to love this country but the U.S. government made his existence impossible,” Sanan said. “They tried to erase him, but they failed.”

McAfee had more than one million followers on Twitter, where he described himself as a “lover of women, adventure and mystery”. In his final tweet, McAfee said, “In a democracy, power is given not taken. But it is still power. Love, compassion, caring have no use for it. But it is fuel for greed, hostility, jealousy…All power corrupts. Take care which powers you allow a democracy to wield.”