“The last words he said to me were, ‘I love you and I’ll call you tonight,'” Janice McAfee, 38, told reporters in front of Brians 2, northwest of Barcelona, where she had come to pick up her husband’s personal belongings. “These are not the words of someone who is considering suicide,” she added in the first public statement after Wednesday’s death of her husband.
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The Spanish authorities are conducting an autopsy, but have already stated that everything at the scene indicates that the 75-year-old McAfee killed himself. The results of the autopsy may be known in the order of “days or weeks”, the authorities said.
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McAfee was arrested by police at Barcelona airport last October, and the court sent him into custody, awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings to the United States. A Spanish court approved McAfee’s extradition to the United States on Wednesday. However, the decision could still be appealed and the Spanish government would have the final say in the matter.
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“We have plans to appeal against this decision,” Janice McAfee added. “I blame the American authorities for this tragedy. My husband is now dead because of their politically motivated allegations.”
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She met her husband in 2012 in Miami and got married a year later. John McAfee had several children from previous relationships. “Although he was born in England, his home was America,” McAfee added. “He moved there as a child. He had his first girlfriend there, his first job. He made his first millions there and wanted to be there. But politics wouldn’t let him.”
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John McAfee settled on the coast of Spain in late 2019. “All he wanted was to spend his last years fishing and drinking,” said his widow. “He hoped that everything would be resolved. We knew it would be a difficult battle to defend this situation. But John is a warrior … and anyone who knows him at least a little knows about him,” she added. “I pray that his soul will find peace in death that it could not find in life.”
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The US authorities claim that the businessman and his associates received over $ 13 million (CZK 277 million) due to the deception of investors. In addition to McAfee, Jimmy Gale Watson was also charged. According to the prosecutor’s office in 2017 and 2018, they abused investors’ interest in the cryptocurrency market to make millions of dollars through “lies and fraud”.
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In addition, according to the Tennessee state attorney, McAfee avoided paying taxes. Among other things, he did not claim income from the promotion of cryptocurrencies, consulting activities, the sale of rights to his life story in a document and public appearances.
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McAfee called the allegations last week politically motivated, claiming that he had criticized the IRS from being a candidate for the US President’s Libertarian Party. He subsequently accused him of not paying taxes. He therefore appealed to the Spanish authorities not to extradite him, as he would otherwise have spent the rest of his life behind bars.
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In 1987, McAfee founded one of the first companies to create programs to ensure security on the Internet. Although he himself left this company a long time ago, it still bears his name.
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