John McAfee
Antivirus company McAfee founder John McAfee has reportedly been found dead in a Spanish jail at the age of 75 following a request for his extradition to the United States on charges related to tax evasion.
According to a report by Reuters, McAfee’s lawyer, Javier Villalba, has claimed the founder was found dead in his Barcelona jail cell.
Reuters said he was initially detained on 3 October in Barcelona following his indictment in Tennessee on tax evasion charges. He was also facing charges related to a cryptocurrency fraud case in New York, according to the outlet.
The outlet also revealed that Spain’s high court had agreed to extradite McAfee to the US on Wednesday. Following this, the regional justice department confirmed that a 75-year-old man was found dead in his cell, with prison authorities investigating the cause of death, the report added.
A post on McAfee’s alleged blog, which was established in November 2012, also claimed that Catalonia’s Department of Justice of the Generalitat confirmed McAfee’s death in module 1 of the Brians 2 Penitentiary Centre (Sant Esteve Sesrovires).
McAfee had a strong presence in the technology landscape, founding McAfee Security in 1987, where he worked until 1994. Since then, he also founded Tribal Voice in 1994, which developed messaging software PowWow, Belize-headquarted herbal antibiotic producer QuorumEx in 2010, and the multi-vertical technology company Future Tense Central in 2013.
McAfee's indictment was not the only legal issues he faced — he was considered to be the prime suspect in the death of a US citizen in Belize during November 2012 and then was arrested in Guatemala in December 2012 only to be expelled from the country to return to the US days later.
He also faced a legal stoush with Intel in 2016 related to its plans to spin out its security business under the McAfee name, as he claimed that he did not assign the rights to his personal name. He then asked a court in New York to order an injunction on the deal until the dispute was resolved.
