John McAfee, the controversial mogul, and the outlandish security software pioneer who founded McAfee, was found dead in his prison cell in Centre Penitenciari Brians 2 near Barcelona, Spain.
The hedonistic outsider's death came just hours after a Spanish court announced that it had approved his extradition to the U.S. to face tax charges punishable by decades in prison, the authorities said.
McAfee, who was among other things, also a cryptocurrency promoter, tax opponent, a U.S. presidential candidate and fugitive, publicly embraced drugs, guns and sex. He had a long history of legal issues spanning from Tennessee to Central America to also the Caribbean.
When he was found not breathing, security personnel tried to revive him, but failed.
The prison's medical team then certified his death, said a statement from the regional Catalan government.
While a court spokeswoman for the Catalonia region said that a forensic team would need to perform toxicology tests on McAfee's body to determine the cause of death, authorities have said that everything at the scene indicated that the 75-year-old tycoon killed himself.
“A judicial delegation has arrived to investigate the causes of death,” the statement read. “Everything points to death by suicide.”
McAfee's Spanish lawyer, Javier Villalba, said that the entrepreneur's death had come as a surprise to his wife, Janice Dyson, and other relatives
“This has been like pouring cold water on the family and on his defense team," said Villalba.
“Nobody expected it, he had not said goodbye.”
A penitentiary source said that McAfee was sharing his prison cell with other inmates. However, McAfee was alone in the moment of his death.
Although Villalba said that he had no evidence of any foul play, he blamed his client's death on “the cruelty of the system” for keeping the 75-year-old in jail for economic reasons and not blood-related crimes after the judges refused to release him on bail.
Jailed in Brians 2 for about nine months, McAfee had opportunities to appeal but could not stand more time in jail, Villalba said.
"This is the result of a cruel system that had no reason to keep this man in jail for so long."
”We had managed to nullify seven of the 10 counts he was accused of and even so he was still that dangerous person who could be fleeing Spain if he was released?" the lawyer said. “He was a world eminence, where could he hide?”
Villalba said that he would seek to get "to the bottom" of his client's death.
John McAfee was born in Gloucestershire, the UK, in 1945.
He moved to the U.S., and experienced a rough childhood, where he grew up with a father who “beat him mercilessly” and killed himself with a shotgun when McAfee was 15.
In 1987, McAfee developed an antivirus he called VirusScan, and founded the company he named McAfee Associates. At the time, he was operating a BBS, a bulletin board system that served as a precursor to the World Wide Web.
And after he sold his stake in the antivirus software company named after him in the early 1990s, McAfee led an eccentric life, which apparently landed him in controversies and legal issues.
Among many people, he is considered a fugitive and a bad person. But to others, he is considered a pioneer.
He was not only known as a security technologist, but also as one of the first to have a company that distribute software over the internet.
While McAfee’s tech legacy may have been overshadowed in recent years by his tumultuous life, Nishay Sanan, a Chicago-based attorney who defended him on many of his cases, said 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.”
Because of the way McAfee lived his life, his death is also a controversy.
And this is why his death sparked internet conspiracy theories.
Besides being accused of committing suicide, McAfee had posted a cryptic image to Instagram, only moments after he was reported dead.
The post only had an image of a large 'Q' with no caption or explanation.
This sparked speculation from QAnon, a conspiracy theorists that the antivirus software entrepreneur had activated a so-called "dead man's switch" to expose the government.
"I've collected files on corruption in governments. For the first time, I'm naming names and specifics. I'll begin with a corrupt CIA agent and two Bahamian officials. Coming today. If I'm arrested or disappear, 31+ terabytes of incriminating data will be released to the press," McAfee tweeted on June 9, 2019.
"There is the possibly a Key code to a dead mans switch. A file that has damning evidence against the deep state, that is to be unlocked at the time of his death. We will see if this pans out. Only time will tell," said MelQ, a QAnon advocate.
A few days before McAfee's death, his wife, Janice Dyson, tweeted that his husband's stance with "corrupt governments" have led the U.S. authorities to determine to have him die in prison.
The US believes I have hidden crypto. I wish I did but it has dissolved through the many hands of Team McAfee (your belief is not required), and my remaining assets are all seized. My friends evaporated through fear of association.
I have nothing.
Yet, I regret nothing.— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 16, 2021