2 min Security

Security pioneer John McAfee dies in Spain

John McAfee has died at the age of 75. The cybersecurity pioneer, who founded the well-known cybersecurity company McAfee in 1987, was found dead in a Spanish prison.

John McAfee died by hanging, according to his lawyer Javier Villalba. The Catalan judiciary confirms the death. According to the lawyer, his time in prison brought McAfee to despair. The security pioneer spent nine months in prison on suspicion of tax evasion. He was arrested in October 2020 at Barcelona airport, when, according to the Spanish police, he wanted to get on a flight to Istanbul with a British passport.

McAfee previously indicated to the court that he would spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted in the US. If found guilty, he faced a possible five-year prison sentence. “I am hoping that the Spanish court will see the injustice of this,” he said earlier. “The United States wants to use me as an example.”

A few hours before the body was found, Spanish judges ruled that McAfee could be extradited to the United States. In America, he faced charges related to tax evasion. He was also charged with crypto currency fraud.

McAfee’s merits

John McAfee worked for NASA, Xerox and Lockheed Martin, before he came up with the world’s first commercial antivirus software in 1987. McAfee grew into one of the largest and most important cybersecurity companies in the world. John McAfee sold his company to Intel in 2011, after which he was no longer involved. After the success with the McAfee company, the security pioneer also founded other companies, including Tribal Voice and Future Tense Central.

In 2015, John McAfee made a bid to become the President of the United States. In recent years, he has frequently focused on crypto-currencies. Among other things, he expected bitcoin to be worth half a million dollars by 2020.