We all know John McAfee for one reason: McAfee’s antivirus software.
Though his antivirus software is what garnered him worldwide fame, John was actually never
that proud of this creation.
For most of us, building a popular antivirus software that Intel would buy for $7.7 billion
would be the highlight of our lives.
But for John McAfee who had racked up achievements ranging from working on the Apollo program
to running for US president, his stint with antivirus software was just another part of
his life.
Unfortunately though, I’m sure all of you guys heard about what just happened to John,
so here’s the bitter fall of John McAfee.
John McAfee was born on September 18, 1945 on a US army base located in Cinderford, England.
Though he was born in England, most of his childhood would be spent in Salem Virginia.
John didn’t have the greatest of childhoods as his father was apparently an abusive alcoholic
who took his own life when John was 15 years old.
His father’s alcoholism rubbed off on John as he picked up heavy drinking at a pretty
early age.
Despite his heavy drinking though, John was a high functioning alcoholic who didn’t
prevent his addiction from disrupting his academic excellence.
McAfee would attend Roanoke College in Virginia and earn his bachelors in mathematics in 1967.
He would instantly turn around and pursue a mathematics doctorate from Roanoke, but
this wouldn’t last too long.
You see, during his doctorate studies, John would form a relationship with an undergraduate
student that the school was not too fond of.
The school would expel John for this relationship, but John wasn’t too worried.
He already ran a local door to door magazine business which he says made him a small fortune.
Moreover, he was able to land a job at Nasa soon after being expelled in 1968.
During his time at Nasa, John worked on the Apollo program as a programmer, and though
he would only work at Nasa for 2 years, those 2 years happened to be 2 of the most important
years for Nasa as they would place humans on the moon in 1969.
After his time at Nasa, John would jump from one company to another throughout the early
1970s.
Throughout this time period, John woud transition from simply being an alcoholic to being a
drug addict.
John says that drug use was extremely common within the tech industry at the time and that
most of his bosses used them as well.
Apparently, he had to hide them from his mother and wife, but he didn’t have to hide them
at the office during lunchtime.
During this dark period of his life, he took on various software developer roles at Univac,
Xerox, CSC, Booz Allen, and Lockheed.
Though his career was progressing just fine, his life was starting to fall apart.
In the early 1980s, his first wife would leave him and he would finally come to the realization
that he was too dependent on drugs and alcohol.
So, he would join a rehabilitation organization called Alcoholics Anonymous which would help
him quit in 1984.
At the time, he was working at Lockheed when the first computer virus called Brain came
out.
Intrigued by the virus, John would start to develop software that could combat computer
viruses.
And, it wouldn’t take long for John to start McAfee Associates in 1987 which sold the first
anti virus software on the market.
In the late 1980s, the average person didn’t have a computer though and the people who
did have a computer didn’t quite understand the threat of viruses.
So, selling antivirus software for $50 a piece likely wouldn't have been that successful.
John was well aware of this, and that’s why he gave away his software for free.
The company made money from providing additional technical support and upgrades.
This clever move allowed the company to quickly dominate the market as there was really no
reason to not have McAfee antivirus software.
Whether you thought computer viruses were a serious threat or not, having extra protection
for free was a no brainer.
As the software exploded in popularity, so did the company’s revenue as they were making
$5 million per year by the end of the 1980s.
Going into the 1990s, the company’s popularity would only continue to grow as computer viruses
became more prevalent.
In 1992, a virus called Michelangelo would make a grand debut infecting tens of thousands
of computers.
Though that scale is nothing compared to what we see today, Michelangelo became a turning
point for consumer awareness surrounding computer viruses.
McAfee would leverage this newfound attention and go public in 1992.
In 1993, John would reduce his role in the company stepping down from CEO to CTO.
John would actually leave the company altogether the following year, but this didn’t really
matter.
He had already built up McAfee to a strong position, and all that was left was continuing
to improve their products and waiting for the market to grow.
But this is when John’s downfall would begin.
He would go ahead and sell his entire stake in McAfee which was worth $100 million at
the time.
While that’s an awesome sum of money, McAfee was still a very young company and internet/computer
adoption was just starting to ramp up.
So, selling his entire stake was a pretty stupid financial decision.
That’s like selling your apple stake when the iPhone 4 came out.
Moreover, John didn’t even have to do anything.
He just had to wait, and he would’ve become a multi billionaire in no time.
But alas, that’s not what happened.
To make things even worse, he wouldn’t preserve very much of the $100 million that he did
cash out.
John would turn around and go on a shopping spree.
He would buy a $25 million mansion in Colorado, a mansion in Hawaii, a private jet, a 157
acre ranch in New Mexico, and dozens of luxury cars.
He basically blew most of his money and put the rest in Lehman Brothers bonds.
Though this was a terrible financial decision, he wouldn’t feel the impact of this decision
for quite some time.
Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, John would lecture at Stanford’s business
school and work on two social network projects called PowWow and Tribal Voice.
Neither of these projects ever gained that much traction though.
Soon enough the financial crisis of 2008 would roll around, and this would basically wipe
out the rest of John’s fortune.
The Lehman brothers would go bankrupt which would make John’s bonds worthless.
Meanwhile, he would have to sell his $25 million Colorado mansion for just $5.7 million and
his Hawaiin mansion would be sold for $1.5 million.
Unfortunately, he basically sold at the bottom of the market, and when everything was said
and done, he only had $4 million.
While that’s still a decent amount, when you consider that he was on the verge of making
$4 billion, it’s really just quite sad.
Since he burned his fortune, John would move to Belize in 2009 where his remaining $4 million
would stretch much further.
While at Belize, McAfee would start a pharmaceutical company called Quorumex.
The company was supposed to use plants to combat various illnesses, but this attracted
a lot of attention from the authorities.
The police suspected that he was manufacturing methamphetamine and they would raid his house
in May of 2012.
They wouldn’t find any methamphetamine, but they did find an abundant amount of firearms
which provoked them to throw John in jail for a night.
Later that same year, one of McAfee’s neighbors named Gregory Faull would be murdered.
John would become the prime suspect due to his large possession of firearms and his unfriendly
relationship with Gregory.
Gregory apparently poisoned John’s dogs, and this is the alleged reason for John wanting
to take out Gregory.
But none of these allegations were ever confirmed.
John would claim that the Belizian authorities were trying to frame him and he would flee
to Guatemala.
Unfortunately for John, a Vice reporter would accidentally leak his location and Guatemalan
authorities would arrest him for illegally entering the country and they would deport
him back to the US.
After returning to the US in 2013, John would start to flame McAfee Antivirus Software claiming
that it had become one of the worst products on the planet.
He didn’t like that his name was still being used to market the product, and when Intel
announced that they would change the branding of McAfee to Intel security, John expressed
that he was eternally grateful to Intel.
Ironically, McAfee would end up demerging with Intel in 2017 and take on the name McAfee
once again.
The demerged company actually just went public at the end of 2020, and they’re worth about
$12 billion today.
Clearly, McAfee corporation has been consistently growing, but the same cannot be said about
John.
After returning to the US in 2013, his life just became even sketchier.
In 2016, he was appointed as the CEO of MGT Capital Investments.
The company was originally focused on investing into social gaming companies, but John would
change the focus to cybersecurity.
Specifically, John wanted to leverage cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to improve cyber
security.
I think a lot of us would agree that this is an awesome idea, as blockchain technology
does seem to be the future of cyber security.
But, at the same time, John was also involved in pumping and dumping cryptos.
Between December 2017 and October 2018, John would recommend cryptos such as Reddcoin and
Dogecoin to his twitter followers.
He would then go on to sell his own holdings after the prices of these cryptos were inflated.
This practice would eventually get him charged for securities fraud.
John entered the crypto space decently early, and I think he could’ve built something
rather large if he put his mind to it, but unfortunately, he chose to spend his time
pumping and dumping meme coins.
And that brings us into his final activity which would seal his fate.
In 2019, John revealed that he hadn’t filed taxes since 2010 citing that taxation was
against the constitution.
He even tried to remove taxation by trying to become president in 2016 and 2020.
In 2016, he originally ran as a candidate of the newly formed Cyber Party, but he would
eventually switch over to the libertarian party.
Though he didn’t win the nomination, he actually did pretty well.
He placed second in the primaries and third in the Libertarian National Convention.
In 2020 though, his bid for presidency wasn’t nearly as viable as he was being chased by
the IRS for tax evasion.
Eventually, the authorities would catch up to him, arresting him on October 5, 2020.
At this point, he was basically screwed.
His decade of tax evasion had earned him up to 30 years in prison meaning that he would
likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
On June 23, 2021, his extradition to the US would be approved and a few hours later he
would be found dead in his prison cell seemingly due to suicide.
His wife says that he wasn’t suicidal and in 2019 McAfee tweeted quote “If I suicide
myself, I didn’t, I was whackd.”
Considering this, his wife is seeking a thorough investigation into his death.
Unfortunately though, this is likely one of those cases where we will never figure out
what happened.
What we know for sure, however, is that John McAfee was a pioneer in cybersecurity and
we all use bits and parts of his original technology today.
What do you guys think was the turning point in McAfee’s life?
Comment that down below.
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