According to reports, tech entrepreneur John McAfee — and founder of the McAfee antivirus software company — has died by suicide in a Spanish jail cell while awaiting extradition to the United States on various financial charges.
Police sources told Spain’s El Pais newspaper that McAfee was found dead in his cell in Barcelona’s Brians 2 prison, located in Sant Esteve de Sesrovires, with the Catalan Department of Justice reporting that “everything points to a suicide.”
The news comes just hours after a Spanish court agreed to extradite McAfee to the United States, where he faced financial charges including tax evasion, according to the New York Post.
“The extradition was approved by the high court in the country and revealed in a court filing on Wednesday that was reviewed by Reuters,” The Post noted.
The Daily Wire reported in October that McAfee had been arrested “and charged with tax evasion, allegedly earning millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies.”
The indictment alleged that McAfee, 75 at the time, evaded U.S. taxes by having his income “paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency accounts in the names of others, while also using the names of others to conceal ownership of property and assets including a yacht,” CNN reported in October.
As The Daily Wire stated, “The Justice Department (DOJ) announced the charges after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it has filed civil charges against McAfee, alleging he made more than $23 million in undisclosed compensation by recommending seven cryptocurrency offerings on Twitter that the SEC claims were false or misleading.”
“McAfee leveraged his fame to make more than $23.1 million in undisclosed compensation” by recommending at least seven initial coin offerings (ICOs) to his Twitter followers, the SEC said. He tried to sell “virtually worthless” cryptocurrency tokens by urging investors to buy the securities without disclosing his own holdings, the SEC alleged.
The DOJ also claimed that McAfee did not file tax returns from 2014 to 2018. McAfee “faces five years in prison on each count of tax evasion and a maximum of one year for each count of willful failure to file a tax return,” CNN reported.
“Prison sources have confirmed that the American tycoon John McAfee, creator of the famous eponymous antivirus, has been found dead in the cell he occupied in module 1 of the Brians 2 Penitentiary Center (Sant Esteve Sesrovires). He was seventy-five years old,” reported Spanish news outlet, El Mundo. “This morning the National Court had finally given the go-ahead to extradite McAfee in the United States.”
It was “reported that the surveillance professionals and the prison medical services have intervened immediately to practice resuscitation maneuvers, but finally the doctors have certified the death,” El Mundo added, according to the translated report.
“The judicial procession has traveled to the prison and is investigating the causes of death. Everything indicates that it could be a death by suicide,” they said in a statement.