“James Bond meets Scarface and a little Indiana Jones.”
That’s John McAfee, the notorious tech mogul who lives a bizarre life shrouded in power, mystery, violence and international espionage, whose new Netflix documentary “With The Devil Runs Together: The Wild World of John McAfee” describes himself.
McAfee was born in England to Donald McAfee, an American soldier turned road surveyor, and Joan, a bank teller. He grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, and worked at NASA before creating the protection software of the same name in the late 1980s. At his peak, His net worth is estimated at $100 millionhe left his successful company in 1994.
But after retiring, his life took a series of strange turns.
He has become increasingly obsessed with using his computer power to harness devices around the world in order to spy on governments, high-profile criminals, and others that interest him.
“John told me he created a software [that] Enables him to spy on anyone in the world. The CIA, FBI, KGB, NSA, even the White House. Everyone,” ghostwriter Alex Cody Foster, who works for McAfee, said in the document. “John had access to information on almost everyone in the world. “
In 2012, he was living on a beach in San Pedro, Belize, when neighbor Gregory Faull died suddenly.
He and McAfee have a conflict over their pet – Fall has a precious parrot and he fears McAfee’s beloved dog will attack it. McAfee’s four puppies were mysteriously poisoned and he had to shoot them. Not long after, Fall was found shot dead in the head. Many believe that McAfee is the culprit.
“John was in a different space” when the murder happened, Daryl Williams, a cousin of McAfee, who had met Fall, says in the film. “Alcohol is back in his life, drugs … they call it mind-altering substances for a reason.”
Others said Faull’s apparent murder was an arrangement against his neighbors because McAfee took advantage of global entities from his years of surveillance.
“His story is that they went after him because he didn’t pay off the government. They wanted to hurt him and get rid of him,” McAfee’s ex-girlfriend Samantha Herrera said in the documentary. She also noted that, through his surveillance, he allegedly discovered hard evidence linking the Belizean government to corruption.
McAfee didn’t stay to clear his name. He and Herrera escaped by boat from Belize to Guatemala and brought their invited sub-crew to document their adventures.
“If you were arrested with me, you could have been subjected to some abuse,” McAfee, fearing authorities would chop off his fingers, told the deputy team in archival footage. “Fuck you too.”
Once in Guatemala City, McAfee was arrested by federal and Interpol agents over a passport issue after he spoke at a news conference calling for an announcement that he was seeking asylum.
“I have documents that prove corruption at all levels of government in Belize,” McAfee told reporters before he was jailed. A few days later, he suffered a heart attack that forced him to be transferred from prison to hospital.
Although it is unclear how McAfee managed to return to the United States while recovering.
There, McAfee ended his relationship with Herrera and went on to marry Janice Dyson, a hugging sex worker he picked up in Miami.
Faure’s murder remains unsolved, and McAfee has never been formally charged with it.
This isn’t the only murder McAfee suspects has approached. His most trusted advisor, known only as Jimmy in the film, once let Foster know that McAfee allegedly killed his abusive father.
“John confided to him that he shot his father as a teenager. He killed him and made it look like suicide,” Foster said. “This is a dangerous man. He hurt a lot of people.”
In 2016, McAfee ran for president with the Libertarian Party’s vote, but lost the primary in a landslide to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. In 2019, McAfee once again felt his paranoia that someone was chasing him. This time it’s not just a government entity, but the internationally feared Sinaloa drug cartel, once led by Joaquin “Short” Guzmán. He worried that the gang wanted to put McAfee’s head on a silver platter.
“He had all the information on the nefarious activities that the Belizean government was involved in, which actually involved other senior American politicians … human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering,” Dyson said.
In 2019, McAfee admitted on camera and on social media that he hadn’t paid his taxes for nearly a decade — another incentive to return to the fugitive.
“He got rid of everything, moved all his assets. The car, the house, he sold it,” Michael King, the associate photographer who McAfee invited him to film the 2019 flight, said in the documentary. “Yes, he packed up and left…it was very difficult. The seventies are on the run again.”
McAfee, Dyson, King, and a team of heavily armed ex-commando private security travel to the Bahamas on a yacht — a yacht McAfee claims he bought from the wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort.
When they got to the port, customs only allowed some of McAfee’s guns and ammunition to stay, so they prominently excluded them.
“We’re here for life and death. Get out now…I’m not taking any chances,” McAfee told the sub-camera.
In addition to the trove of guns around the yacht, McAfee was using a lot of drugs at the time — most notably bath salts, King said.
They got McAfee into trouble. He started shooting randomly from the boat without telling anyone, and even half-jokingly threatened to shoot Kim in the foot, pulling a pistol at the photographer.
McAfee also admitted to King — who had suspended play after being threatened with shooting — that his wanted status and past may have been blatant lies.
“I’ll make up any reality I see fit to catch the eye, Robert, do we know? … I created this gold, you understand? I made up a perception that matches reality,” McAfee said on camera .
Foster also recalled McAfee’s ability to twist the truth into anything he liked.
“He’s the smartest, most manipulative person I’ve ever met. He also wants to control the narrative. He does it very skillfully.”
McAfee was eventually arrested in the Dominican Republic for irresponsibly showing off one of his guns on a frantic yachting trip. He managed to be deported to Europe using his British passport and ended up in Spain, where he was arrested again. There, he awaits extradition to the United States in October 2020 on charges of tax evasion and insider trading.
In June 2021, McAfee’s feared extradition was finally granted. Then, later that month, he was found hanged in his cell. This is the moment McAfee has warned about online for years.
“If I killed myself, I didn’t. I was beaten,” He made a famous tweet in 2019showing off the tattoo he got, which reads $WHACKD.
“I didn’t kill myself, my friend, no, okay? If I fell, I would fight with my shoes on,” McAfee can be heard saying in the recorded audio.
But the master deception master who once said “The Joker is probably the best description of me” – is there one last card left to play?
“I don’t know if I should say, but two weeks ago, after his death, I got a call from Texas: ‘It’s me, John. I pay people to pretend I’m dead, but I Not dead,’” Herrera said in the bombshell moment at the end of the documentary.
“[He said,] “There are only three people in this world who know I’m alive.” Then he asked me to run away with him. “
McAfee’s company is now worth about $14 billion.
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