U.S. technology entrepreneur John McAfee allegedly hanged himself in his prison cell on Wednesday just hours after the Spanish high court authorized his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges.
Known for his eccentric behaviour, McAfee, 75, was a pioneer of anti-virus software, introducing his eponymous program in the 1980s. He had been indicted in Tennessee on tax evasion charges. He also was charged in a cryptocurrency fraud case in New York.
McAfee was arrested in the Barcelona airport then jailed there in October. Prison authorities were investigating the cause of death.
Spain’s high court agreed to extradite McAfee to the United States, a court document released on Wednesday said. The provincial justice department confirmed that a U.S. man aged 75 was found dead in his cell on Wednesday.
McAfee, who sold his software company to Intel in 2011 and no longer had any involvement in the business, lived a colourful life.
He said in 2019 that he had not paid U.S. income taxes for eight years for ideological reasons. That year, he left the United States to avoid trial, largely living on a megayacht with his wife, four large dogs, two security guards and seven staff.
He offered to help Cuba avoid a U.S. trade embargo using cryptocurrency and sought to run for U.S. president for the Libertarian Party.
McAfee, who said in 2018 that he had fathered at least 47 children, lived in Belize for several years. He fled after police sought him for questioning in the 2012 murder of a neighbour. He had a million followers on Twitter.
MacDailyNews Take: McAfee’s million Twitter followers have seen some interesting tweets, including:
In a strange twist, Spanish officials said Epstein’s, I mean, McAfee’s right arm was missing, severed at the shoulder. Prison authorities are said to be conducing a full search.
“he had not paid U.S. income taxes for eight years for ideological reasons.”
What an asshole. Money is a service of the government. It can’t exist without taxpayers supporting it. If you are rich and not paying taxes, by definition, you are stealing from all the people around you who support the laws you depend on to keep your wealth.
“One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.” ― Ron Paul
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ― Frédéric Bastiat
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” ― Thomas Jefferson
GFY, lovers of Big Government.
“Plunder becomes a way of life”?
“ideas he disbelieves and abhors”?
What were the founding fathers doing to the Native Americans? And what did the founding fathers do to their neighbors who wanted to remain loyal to their king?
“The power to tax is the power to destroy.” ― John Marshall
“By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence..” ― Joseph Sobran
“You don’t pay taxes-they take taxes.” ― Chris Rock
What is the Democrat Party today doing to keep the black population in the urban plantation, with them as the plantation owners. Welfare payments and food stamps, all to keep the slaves happy. What party fought to keep slavery? What party passed the Jim Crow laws to implement separate but equal? What party fought the 1964 Civil Rights laws? What party did Martin Luther King Jr. abhor? And what party today does everything it can to deny blacks good educations and to keep them in the chains of “hatred” against whites so they won’t advance out of the Democrat run Urban Plantation complex? All Democrats. They hate blacks, and anyone else who wants to just be left alone to pursue happiness. America’s Communist Party. Destroying everything it touches.
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/civil-rights-act-1957
Here’s something seldom taught in schools and for good reason.
Why? Because many of the same Democrats who weakened it voted for an expanded version in 1964 when THEY could take credit for it, which explains why they can’t afford young impressionable kids to learn about it in school.
Toss in The Great Society which goes to more Whites but to a higher percentage of Blacks and voila, the Democrats have paid their reparations and bought the Black vote for the next 50 years.
If you don’t want to pay for a service, DON’T USE IT. Go to some other country that works the way you want. (Your claims about the founding fathers are pure fantasy.). Freedom does not mean being a parasite on others.
Tau, this concept is far above your comprehension level, but to be fair, most concepts are
Are you talking about the same Founding Fathers who literally got rich by owning other human beings to do their labor?
Exactly how many owned slaves?
Just over half the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Just under half the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Four of the first five Presidents.
So now you are Tommy Boy?
Anyhow it was a rhetorical question but good for you.
Well, I guess the Founding Fathers also never intended the USA to spend so many billions on things that just go BOOM!
“What an asshole.” It seems that you are projecting.
“Money is a service of the government.” That statement makes no sense at all. It is apparent that you got your education from a government-run school.
Backend Engineer works for Apple. Or Google, or somewhere else. Take your pick. Take home salary? $600k (not all that unusual these days.) Taxes on that take home for a single person? $339,000. They just take it. Then demand you prove you didn’t get a nickel more from anywhere.
Utterly Insane.
This engineer worked half his life as a slave for the entire year. Where is the emancipation for the productive? If there is anything that is truly politically incorrect, it is the tax system.
https://www.levels.fyi/company/Apple/salaries/Software-Engineer/
It occurs to me that my engineer mentioned above is paying the salaries of two members of Congress. Yup, slavery it is.
If we were actually getting bullet trains, if the people of Flint Michigan didn’t have to wait for 5 years to get their water cleaned up, if we actually had a medical system that wasn’t a pile of crap shoveled on top of the existing insurance system, if Chicago wasn’t a war zone run by a mayor who is at best a Batman villain, if we weren’t spending trillions on stupid wars, if we actually had a government that didn’t spend years on trying to convict a sitting effective president so they could replace him with a sock puppet, if we were rebuilding our manufacturing for the future to bring those jobs back home, if we were educating our children in stem instead of the ungodly crap of leftist morons like critical race theory, and on and on and on… that would be one thing.
We are not getting our money’s worth.
Suck it up wing nut and pay your taxes.
It’s not ‘get it from the 1%’ that is the correct money grubbing answer to all budget solutions, it’s the 11% answer.
If you took 111% from the Top 11%, you can only pay for 11% of everything the Democrats want to do!
Where do you think the rest is coming from? You! ― Kevin Kolenda
GFY, lovers of Big Government.
First Then: What makes you think you deserve freedom if you aren’t willing to support the troops who need money and gear to defend that freedom? That is what more than half of your taxes go to. That is what your billionaire buddies are getting from you for free.
Without the “tyranny” of supporting the troops, you’ll get the tyranny of someone else’s troops taking over the land you thought was yours. And you’ll deserve it.
Dear Tim Apple (likely Tau Myx using a pseudonym):
For anyone, especially a government-employed stooge (most likely again, judging from your viewpoints) to call Thelonious a wing nut, is beyond belief. The man is brilliant and has more good sense in his toes than your brain can contain.
Your absurd opinions, from a person with no apparent knowledge of history—US or foreign, are naive and foolish…about 97% of the time.
And for you and t2, I am one of those combat veterans who fought in Vietnam. We flew at low level over areas freshly doused with Agent Orange. Our campsites (we lived in tents, by the way, despite being officers) were regularly fogged in the evenings with DDT and we were uninformed about the hazards of either one. We thought the DDT mists we walked by had an interesting aroma. I can tell you that your Dem favorites got the US involved into almost all of the wars we became involved in. You can check it out. Woodrow Wilson despite promises to never take the USA into foreign wars jumped us into WW1. FDR led us into WW2 by deliberately provoking Japan by forcing other countries to stop all steel and oil sales to them; and he then created a lure using Pearl Harbor as a tempting target so as to galvanize the American public to change their opposition to another European war involvement when they became outraged at the attack. Your buddy LBJ took the US troop levels in Vietnam to 650,000 from the meager 10,000-20,000 advisors and trainers that JFK had there (and JFK was ready to withdraw all of our forces once he cleared the hurdle of the 1964 elections—and he was a strident anti-communist!)
So, go pound sand with your stupid and self-enriching “opinions” regarding an overwhelmingly gargantuan USA federal government. There is no end to its appetite for wealth. It is hard to believe that up to the unconstitutional imposition of taxes and the formation of the IRS in 1913, our federal government kept within its budgets and was funded solely by tariffs and luxury goods taxes. Think about it.
All of the post WW2 wars have been bogus and were hugely profitable for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in his final speech as president. His wording was carefully crafted to be as explicit as he dared. And of all people, and having been the 5 star general leading the allies in WW2, he would know.
Oh, that wicked Woodrow Wilson getting upset just because Germany was looting Belgium, torpedoing neutral shipping, killing Americans, and offering to give Texas back to Mexico. That even more wicked FDR refusing to see the Final Solution and the Rape of Nanking as the good clean fun they were. Then, you tell us that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution is somehow unconstitutional. Wow, I never knew.
My view point is – if this is true – that McAfee was killed by the US government – what McAfee directly stated than we should all be concerned regardless of political position. If the government killed a person, took away his due process then we are not living in a constitutional republic but rather a Fascist government where the elites dictate who lives or dies based on their own sense of rules and judgement. I think we can all agree that Fascism in any form is a threat to our way of life.
If it’s true, sure. But then what to you expect to do about it? Will a government that can kill McAfee yield to a bunch of whiners on a web site? The fact that these claims run rampant almost proves that they aren’t true.
According to Wikipedia:
“ Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.”
Wouldn’t you agree that by discounting a view point of what mcafee and others are say that it is, “…suppression of the opposition..”. Those who agree that mcafee could of been killed by the government a forcible action and those who disagree with high taxation are essentially calling out of the potential of “ strong regimentation of society and of the economy”.
I personally do not support facism in any form or any label. I think those speaking out are saying that it would not go beyond the past history of those in charge. I wouldn’t discount it so quickly by calling those unpatriotic. Look at what are own country did to our soldiers in Vietnam with agent orange and the subsequent cover up.
When one starts out with “According to Wikipedia:,” there is no need to read any farther.
Your absolutely right not a good source. It’s not like we had a revolution based on taxation. 🤭
I had no idea he knew the Clintons…