His suicide comes a few hours after the announcement of his extradition to the United States. John McAfee, the American creator of the famous eponymous antivirus software wanted by his country for tax evasion, was a priori killed on Wednesday in a Spanish prison, where he had been remanded in custody since his arrest in October 2020.
According to El Pais, John McAfee, 75, was found hanged in his cell. Despite resuscitation maneuvers, the man could not be saved. “He was found dead in his cell, apparently he committed suicide,” said a spokesperson for the prison authorities in Catalonia, the region in northeastern Spain where he was being held.
The Spanish justice had authorized, earlier in the day, his extradition to the United States. The green light of the National Hearing could still be the subject of a judicial appeal and the extradition will also have to be approved by the Spanish government, specified the judgment of the court.
Millions of dollars unreported
John McAfee was arrested the day after a US prosecutor published an indictment against him for failing to report millions of dollars in revenue from the promotion of cryptocurrencies, consulting services, conferences and of rights sold so that a documentary about his life can be made. According to American justice, John McAfee would also have concealed property, including real estate, a yacht and a car by also putting them in the name of other people.
After making his fortune with his eponymous antivirus in the 1980s, John McAfee has become a cryptocurrency guru with which he claims to earn $ 2,000 a day and is followed by nearly a million people on Twitter. The entrepreneur was also indicted in March by the American justice system for having promoted several operations related to cryptocurrency to his fans on Twitter without telling them that he was probably going to withdraw tidy sums.
John McAfee hit the headlines in 2012 when his neighbor in Belize, a small Central American country, was mysteriously murdered, a crime unsolved to date. The police then discovered that he was living with a 17-year-old girl and that he had several weapons in his house. McAfee was off on an incredible getaway that kept the media going for a month. In 2015, he was arrested in the United States for driving under the influence of drugs and was then discreet in the media … until January 2019 when he fled his country of which he wanted to run for president. .
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