Greeva Garg –
The Unites States Tech Entrepreneur and founder of antivirus software McAfee, John McAfee committed suicide by hanging himself in a prison in Barcelona.
It is reported that he took this step after the Spanish High Court approved his transfer to the United States on suspicion of Tax Evasion.
John McAfee was a pioneer of anti-virus software, introducing his eponymous program in the 1980’s. He has already been indicted in Tennessee on Tax Evasion charges.
Not only this, but he was also charged in a Cryptocurrency fraud case in New York.
McAfee was detained at Barcelona’s El Prat airport on October 3, 2020 as he attempted to board a plane to Turkey.
McAfee was facing charges in the United States for various tax offenses. Therefore, the Spanish High Court agreed to hand over McAfee to the United States, a court document released Wednesday said.
McAfee’s Lawyer, Javier Vilalba said that “McAfee still had the opportunity to appeal his conviction but couldn’t stand any more time in prison. The antivirus software pioneer died by hanging as his nine months in prison brought him to despair. This is the result of a cruel system that had no reason to keep this man in jail for a long time.”
McAfee worked for NASA, Xerox, and Lockheed Martin before launching the World’s First Commercial Antivirus in 1987.
McAfee sold his software company to Intel in 2011 and was not involved in the business since then.
The program still bears his name and has 500 million users worldwide.
McAfee made heavy use of Twitter and other social media with a million followers. In his last public tweet of June 18, McAfee wrote, “All power corrupts. Pay attention to the powers that you allow a democracy to exercise.”
Many cryptocurrency supporters around the world posted their condolence tweets, following his death.