Bitcoiner John McAfee Found Dead in Prison Cell

The Department of Justice of the Spanish Generalitat has confirmed that the American tycoon and prominent bitcoiner John McAfee, longtime hacker and creator of the antivirus software of his name, has been found dead in the cell he occupied in module 1 of the Brians 2 Penitentiary Center (Sant Esteve Sesrovires) in Spanish jail. He was seventy-five years old. This morning the Spanish National Court had finally given the go-ahead to extradite McAfee to the United States.

Authorities reported that the surveillance professionals and the prison medical services intervened immediately to practice resuscitation, but in the end doctors certified the death. “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.

McAfee was arrested in October at El Prat airport, in Barcelona, ​​when he was preparing to catch a flight to Istanbul and had been in preventive detention since then, after the court also rejected his last request for freedom, stating that “the risk of flight continues to be evident.”

The National Court had agreed to the extradition of John McAfee to the United States for alleged tax evasion through allegedly hiding income between 2016 and 2018.

In an order that could have been appealed, the Second Criminal Section ordered extradition related to 2016, 2017 and 2018, with the agreement of the Prosecutor’s Office. But not so with respect to years corresponding to 2014 and 2015, which US also claimed, since in Spain they would be constitutive in all cases of administrative infraction.

Contrary to the defense thesis, the court ruled out suggestions of “persecution motivated by political, ideological or similar reasons” since, “beyond the verbal allegations” of McAfee, no “revealing evidence has been provided” that he could be subjected to such treatment.

“Social, economic, or any other allegations, which the defense claims, does not grant him any immunity, being subject to the laws in the same way as any ‘non-relevant’ citizen,” said the court.

MILLION DOLLARS IN TAXES
During the extradition hearing, the businessman, whose tax debt in the United States allegedly amounted to more than four million dollars, claimed to have paid “millions of dollars in taxes” and said he was the victim of political persecution for having denounced corruption in the tax agency.

John McAfee was one of the first programmers to design an antivirus and develop a computer virus scanner when he was working for the aerospace company Lockheed. In 1989 he founded the antivirus company McAfee Associates, which for a few years called itself Network Associates and which eventually became the McAfee company we know. In 2010, he launched a new project focused on biosecurity at the head of the QuorumEx company, based in Belize.

In 2016 he made his debut at the Blockchain Money Conference in London, pictured to the left, after which he became a prominent bitcoiner during the 2017 crypto bull run.

*The above is translated from El Mundo with heavy modifications

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