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Sunday, February 19, 2023

John McAfee: A Troubled and Turbulent Life

     In 1994, 49-year-old John McAfee, a computer tycoon who developed anti-privacy software and helped pioneer instant messaging, sold his Silicon Valley company for $100 million. About this time, following twenty years of drug abuse, he suffered a heart attack. In 2007, after losing all but $4 million of his fortune on bad investments, McAfee moved to Belize, a small Central American country south of Mexico and east of Guatemala on the Atlantic coast. McAfee moved into a house in San Pedro's Mata Grande subdivision.

     According to media reports John McAfee had slipped back into a lifestyle of hallucinogenic drugs like crystal meth and bath salts that made him erratic, paranoid and according to his neighbors, dangerous. In April 2012, the Belize police raided his home looking for drugs and guns. Although some weapons were seized and he was taken into custody the police quickly released him. No charges were filed. (Later, McAfee donated handcuffs, tasers, batons, firearms and other law enforcement items to the police department.)

     A few months after McAfee's arrest, a group of residents of the Mata Grande subdivision submitted a written complaint against him to the authorities in San Pedro. McAfee's neighbors complained about his security guards who "walked around with shotguns at night up and down the beach." According to the complainants, the guards "shine spotlights right into peoples' eyes at night and act aggressively with their guns, chambering a bullet [a round] and nonsense such as this. People are scared to walk down the beach at night as a result. The tourists are terrified." The neighbors also didn't like the taxi cab and delivery truck traffic to and from McAfee's house at all hours of the night. (According to reports, the cabs often delivered prostitutes to his home.) In addition, McAfee's four security dogs frightened and harassed residents of the subdivision. One of the dogs supposedly bit a tourist.

     On November 7, 2012, one of McAfee's neighbors, Gregory Faull, a 52-year-old builder from Florida, filed a formal complaint with the San Pedro mayor's office. Faull accused his 67-year-old neighbor of recklessly firing off his guns and exhibiting "roguish behavior." Faull also complained about McAfee's loud and aggressive attack dogs.

     There was no question that McAfee's neighbors considered him, if not insane, an unstable drug-addled gun nut in the mold of the gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson. Photographs surfaced showing McAfee posing with a variety of pistols, rifles and shotguns. One of the photos depicts the skinny, bearded and bare-chested millionaire pressing the muzzle of a pistol to his temple.

     On Sunday morning, November 11, 2012, Gregory Faull's 39-year-old Belizean housekeeper, Laura Tun, found him on the second floor of his house lying face-up in a pool of blood. Someone had shot him in the back of the head. The police found a 9 mm shell casing on the floor near his body. There was no sign of forced entry and the dead man's iPhone and laptop computer had been taken. Mr. Faull had been murdered the night before.

     John McAfee immediately emerged as a suspect in his neighbor's murder. The police went to his house that Sunday to question him. He wasn't home and no one knew his whereabouts.

     Two days after the murder, McAfee was still at large. A spokesperson for the Belize Ministry of National Security publicly urged him to come in for questioning. Not long after that, McAfee, in a telephone interview with Joshua Davis, a writer for Wired Magazine, said he was in hiding. According to McAfee, "they [the police] will kill me if they find me." The so-called person of interest in the Faull murder case told the journalist that his four dogs had been poisoned by the Belizean authorities as part of a vendetta against him. He claimed that he was unarmed, accompanied by a young woman and had to move from place to place to stay ahead of the police.

     On November 16, 2012 John McAfee told a reporter for CNBC that he had spent six days hiding from the police at his compound on Ambergris Caye, a stretch of island just off the Belizean coast. When the police searched his property, he hid by burying himself in sand with a cardboard box over his head that allowed him to breathe. He denied any knowledge of Mr. Faull's death.

     On December 5, 2012 the authorities arrested John McAfee in Guatemala, but a week later, a Guatemalan judge ruled his detention illegal and released him.

     Deported from Guatemala, John McAfee, on December 12, 2012 arrived in Miami aboard an American Airlines flight.

     In May 2013, McAfee was living in Oregon working on a book and a film project about his troubled, turbulent life. That month his house in Belize went up in flames. In speaking to a Fox News reporter about the fire, McAfee said, "I believe that there are a few with great power in Belize that will go to great lengths to harm me. This fire was not just a strange coincidence."

     In speaking to a reporter with the Huffingtonpost in July 2013, Mr. McAfee, in reference to Gregory Faull, said, "I never killed anyone, it's not my style."

     Gregory Faull's daughter, in November 2013, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against McAfee in an Orlando, Florida federal court. The plaintiff, in a press release, stated: "The Faull family intends to pursue all possible avenues to ensure the individual or individuals responsible for the death of Gregory Faull are brought to justice…The true facts will come to light as to how and by whom Gregory met his end."

     In September 2015, McAfee announced that he was running for president under his own creation, the Cyber Party. According to McAfee, as president of the United States, he would address the problem that "national leaders have little or no understanding of the cyber science upon which national finance, military systems and every aspect of social systems to television and automobiles are based." 
     In June 2000, while McAfee was living in Barcelona, Spain, the Unites States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee announced that McAfee had been indicted for tax evasion and related offenses. According to the federal prosecutor, McAfee, during the period 2014-2018, had failed to file tax returns. Authorities in Barcelona, Spain arrested McAfee in October 2000. 
     On June 23, 2001, the day before he was to be extradited to the United Sates, a prison guard in Barcelona found John McAfee dead in his cell. According to prison authorities the 75-year-old committed suicide.

2 comments:

  1. You should update this article as it is not factual.

    1) //According to media reports, John McAfee had slipped back into a lifestyle of hallucinogenic drugs like crystal meth and bath salts that made him erratic, paranoid, and according to his neighbors, dangerous.//

    False. This is sensationalist nonsense used to get clicks and hits on their websites: www.bealibertarian.com/faq

    2) The Belizean government never stated McAfee was a suspect.

    3) The police found a 9 mm shell casing on the floor near his body.//

    False. The shell was found on the staircase.

    4) There was no sign of forced entry and the dead man's iPhone and laptop computer had been taken. Mr. Faull had been murdered the night before.

    And Faull's parents also stated that Faull slept with the doors and windows wide open to facilitate a breeze. The assassin could have literally been anyone, including the thugs trying to extort McAfee for $2M in "donations".

    5) John McAfee immediately emerged as a suspect in his neighbor's murder.

    He was NEVER mentioned as a suspect. They wanted to "interview" him. As of May 2016, he is not currently even wanted for "questioning". In February 2016, his former girlfriend, Anna, the very one that tried to kill John himself and slyly told reporters "It could have been anyone", was arrested in Belize. No update on her whereabouts have been given or update on the "investigation" (use this loosely as it is a banana republic notorious for corruption).

    McAfee has repeatedly said he will testify under neutral terms and submit to questioning under any circumstances now that he is out of Belize. The Belizean authorities declined. To me, that's much more interesting.

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  2. My source confirms that John paid a local man to kill his neighbor

    Currently that assassin has decided (as of January 2017) to testify against John using a secret recording of their arrangement, and to that end, is negotiating a plea deal with authorities.

    John is an insane drug addict and sociopath, and will soon be under arrest and face indictment in this vastly underreported story



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