Tag Archive for: Fugitive

John McAfee, Software Pioneer Turned American Fugitive, Dies In Spanish Prison

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John McAfee in the main house of his property in Rodeo, N.M., on June 4, 2009. McAfee, the founder of the antivirus software maker bearing his name, died in a prison in Spain on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, the same day a Spanish court ruled that he could be extradited to the United States on tax-evasion charges. He was 75. Image: Chris Richards/The New York Times

John David McAfee, the founder of the antivirus software maker bearing his name, died in a prison in Spain on Wednesday, after a Spanish court said that he could be extradited to the United States on tax-evasion charges.
His death was confirmed by his lawyers. He was 75. 
After selling his pioneering virus-fighting firm in 1994 and losing most of his fortune during the 2008 financial crisis, McAfee led a peripatetic life that included a turn to paranoia and a string of arrests around the globe. That all culminated in his detention in Spain in 2020 after prosecutors in the United States accused him of not filing tax returns for several years. The indictment filed by the Justice Department said McAfee had earned millions from “promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary,” and had tried to avoid taxes by using cryptocurrency and channeling the money through bank accounts. He could have faced prison time if convicted. McAfee said he had been arrested despite paying “millions of dollars in taxes” and resisted extradition, claiming he faced political persecution for denouncing corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and opposing the fiat money system, in which central banks like the Federal Reserve control the money supply. But on Wednesday, the Spanish court released its decision to allow the Justice Department’s request to extradite him, saying there was “no supporting evidence that such a thing could be happening.” “The social, economic or any other relevance the defense claims the appellant possesses does not grant him any immunity,” the ruling stated. “When I heard of John’s impending extradition, my team was fully prepared to fight for his innocence…

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John McAfee, Software Pioneer Turned Fugitive, Dies in Spanish Prison

/in


John David McAfee, the founder of the antivirus software maker bearing his name, died in a prison in Spain on Wednesday, the same day a Spanish court ruled that he could be extradited to the United States on tax-evasion charges.

His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Nishay K. Sanan. Mr. McAfee was 75.

Mr. McAfee was arrested in Spain in 2020 after prosecutors in the United States accused him of not filing tax returns from 2014 to 2018, even as he earned millions from “promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary,” according to an indictment filed by the Justice Department last year.

He had resisted extradition to the United States, claiming he faced political persecution by U.S. authorities in part because he opposed the fiat money system. But on Wednesday, the Spanish court said it would allow the Justice Department’s request to extradite him.

“The social, economic or any other relevance the defense claims the appellant possesses does not grant him any immunity,” the ruling stated. The court also said that, besides verbal allegations, there was “no revealing data or indication that Mr. McAfee could be subjected to any political persecution.”

Mr. McAfee was also at the center of a media frenzy in 2012 surrounding the death in Belize of a neighbor. He fled his home there after the police called him a “person of interest.”

McAfee, the software company that he founded, was once a household name in computer security. But it rose to prominence largely without Mr. McAfee, after he resigned from the company in 1994. Intel, the computer chip maker, bought the company in 2010 for $7.7 billion, then sold its majority stake to an investment firm six years later.

Before and after its purchase by Intel, the company tried to distance itself from Mr. McAfee. In 2014, Intel changed the company’s name to Intel Security, but it never completely shook its attachment to its founder and the brand he helped create.

In 2016, when Mr. McAfee tried to use the name with a new security company, Intel filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent him from doing so. Intel and Mr. McAfee settled the lawsuit, with Mr. McAfee…

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Fugitive Fraudster Who Demanded Half Of Facebook Arrested After Three Years On The Run

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It’s been a while since we last wrote about Paul Ceglia. If you don’t recall, way back in 2010, Ceglia suddenly claimed that years earlier, he had hired Mark Zuckerberg to do some software development, and bizarrely (and literally unbelievably), that part of the contract for Zuck to work on Ceglia’s project… was an agreement to hand over 50% of Facebook, which didn’t even exist yet. Making it more ridiculous, Ceglia then claimed some weird interest amounts, and therefore was demanding ownership of 84% of Facebook. The whole thing was nonsensical, and while Zuckerberg admitted he had done some work for Ceglia prior to starting Facebook, nothing about the supposed contract made any sense at all. Beyond the bizarre nature of the contract Ceglia claimed he had with Zuckerberg, it quickly became clear that other evidence Ceglia presented, including purported emails, didn’t look real.

A year later, during the discovery process in the lawsuit, the actual original contract was found and it didn’t mention Facebook at all, just as most people assumed. Instead, it became clear that Ceglia doctored their contract. Ceglia tried, weakly, to claim that even though the original was found on his computer during discovery, that it was actually Photoshopped and planted by Facebook. As you might imagine, literally no one believed that. It also probably didn’t help that he kept some of the details of his plan in an email account called GetZuck.

Finally, in 2012, Ceglia was arrested for fraud. He was set to go to trial in 2015 when he disappeared — apparently cut off his ankle bracelet and disappeared with his family. Late last week, however, it was reported that he had been found and arrested in Ecuador and was likely to be sent back to the US shortly.

I guess it’s hard to just disappear in the age of Facebook. Even if you pretend to own a giant chunk of it.

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