“I have nothing. Yet, I regret nothing” - John McAfee
This was the final tweet of the well-known and controversial figure John McAfee. He was once known as the visionary new technology entrepreneur who created the first antivirus software in the late 1980s, being the first cyber security solution. But his life was way more than that.
After making millions after creating cyber security solutions and selling his stake in McAfee Associates, John McAfee’s life took a dramatic turn. Accused of murder. Methamphetamine production. Tax evasion. Eventually, he found himself in prison somewhere in Barcelona. However, despite these shocking events, the life of John McAfee is both a staggering adventure as well as an unbelievable movie.
McAfee started his way into the new technology world by working for companies like Xerox and Univac and also for NASA.
But back in the ‘80s, computers were starting to get more popular, and a new threat was knocking on the door: viruses. This caught John McAfee’s attention and motivated him to help people stay safe and protect themselves from potential threats with cyber security solutions. So, what did he do? He came up with the antivirus McAfee VirusScan.
It’s fair to say that the program quickly became a huge success and helped millions of people secure their computers from viruses and other malware. It was also used by some of the biggest companies in the world, becoming the biggest supplier of computer virus detection and prevention software to corporations and even government agencies.
However, it was McAfee’s innovative approach to cybersecurity and new technology that earned him a reputation as a visionary entrepreneur and a pioneer in the antivirus field.
By the beginning of the ’90s, his company, McAfee Associates, was reportedly making around $5 million in revenues annually. But the year 1992 faced the threat of one the worst computer viruses ever, called “Michelangelo”, which was infecting millions and millions of computers worldwide. So we started paying more attention to the danger that the internet was presenting, and we were paying even more importance to software like McAfee’s Antivirus.
What’s shocking, though, is that after his product started getting more traction, John McAfee sold his stake in the company for reportedly 100 million dollars. The company which offers cyber security solutions such as antivirus is now worth billions. But it was after stepping out of his company that the saga of the downfall of one of the most controversial moguls in the Tech industry began.
Although McAfee spent a few years mentoring young entrepreneurs and investing in different startups, his name was in the news for other reasons.
Between his investments, we can find his name being associated with the PowWow application developed by TribalVoice Inc., which was the first instant messages application developed for Windows. PowWow was closed in 2001 due to an inability to reach a high mass of users. But because McAfee had a lot of other plans and quite a messy lifestyle, he couldn’t be involved in the project as much as he should have been.
His lifestyle, full of controversies, might I add, was following around. Drugs, weapons, women, and paranoia, all of these were propelling him into the news headlines every year. However, the 2008 financial crisis saw the fortune of John McAfee going down a lot, with newspapers reporting that his net worth was just above $4 million that year. While we don’t know if that’s accurate, we do know that he took a path of criticizing the government and being obsessed with conspiracy theories, spying, and, again, paranoia.
By 2012, his life took a dramatic turn for the worse, and for the decade to come, John McAfee would spend his life through even more periods of huge controversies.
At the time, McAfee was living in Belize, where he owned a beach mansion. He has already gotten himself accused of meth production, unlicensed gun usage, and bizarre activities. But it was the death of his neighbor, Greg Faull, that got him to become a fugitive for the first time. We are told that before his death, Faull filed a complaint about the activities of John McAfee and was allegedly worried that John’s dogs were going to harm his parrot.
We know how that sounds. But going with the report, a couple of dogs were poisoned mysteriously and had to be killed. A few days after that, Greg Faull is found dead by a gunshot. So, it can’t be a coincidence. But McAfee flees to Belize, stating that he is scared the target is him, blaming the death of his neighbor on a confusion of houses by a drug cartel.
He was finally arrested in Guatemala for illegally entering the country and was supposed to be deported back to Belize. However, somehow, while threatening to own intel about governments being corrupted, he managed to get himself to the United States.
You might think that by now, John McAfee, since he was almost in his 70s, was finally ready to step back into retirement. But he was not even close.
He followed by running for president in the United States two times in a row, in 2016 and 2020, as a candidate for the Libertarian Party. But McAfee’s political campaigns were highly controversial, with many positions and statements drawing criticism and scrutiny from both the media and the public.
By 2020 he tweeted that he didn’t pay any taxes for almost a decade. By this time, he has already invested himself in the world of cryptocurrencies, being an advocate for the new technology. He even launched his own cryptocurrency called McAfee Coin. But as he proved himself every time for being restless, McAfee quickly flew to Europe trying to escape US government accusations of tax evasion.
So, he was caught and incarcerated in Spain in 2020 and was held there for more than a year. Now it was time for John McAfee to finally be extradited back to the US to face his charges, but the same day the announcement of his extradition happened, he reportedly hung himself in the cell.
As you can see, his life is not the typical tech genius entrepreneur life that we are used to. He left us a valuable lesson about what fame, drugs, and living life on the edge can do to a man’s mental health. While we can’t say for sure what his true mental state was, his actions spoke for themselves and brought him into the spotlight again and again. His legacy is that of a pioneer in cybersecurity and a man who influenced the tech industry a lot during his lifetime. But McAfee was much more than that, with controversy being one way to describe him
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