Speaker 1: Francois Garcia is a Canadian filmmaker. He purchased the rights
Speaker 1: to make a documentary based on John mccafee's life in
Speaker 1: late twenty twelve, about two months after McAfee's neighbor in
Speaker 1: Belize turned up dead, and over the next couple of
Speaker 1: years he would try to line up meetings with people
Speaker 1: in the film industry. Never stood involved. We're talking to
Speaker 1: several high profile directors as well, So idol, John, I
Speaker 1: want to set up a meeting. You guys can chat.
Speaker 1: Francois says that during this period, John mccafee was taking bathsols,
Speaker 1: a very addictive synthetic drug known to cause euphoric highs
Speaker 1: and hallucinations, which was making it hard to set up
Speaker 1: meetings because McAfee said he didn't feel safe anywhere. He
Speaker 1: had fears of the cartel everywhere he went. So, can
Speaker 1: we do this in La? In La, it's too dangerous
Speaker 1: for me, too many Mexican cortels. Okay, John, all right?
Speaker 1: Can we do this in New York? No? I can't
Speaker 1: do New York because I can't carry weapons in New York. Therefore,
Speaker 1: I can't protect myself from the cartels like my god Man,
Speaker 1: just to help me out here. I'm not gonna ask
Speaker 1: you every city in the United States. Just give me
Speaker 1: a city. McAfee chooses Boston. He tells Francois that he's
Speaker 1: Irish and he feels like he'd be safe there, surrounded
Speaker 1: by other Irish people. So they're at the Hilton in
Speaker 1: Boston waiting in the lobby for the potential director to
Speaker 1: show up, and McAfee starts to get jittery, and he says, sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't do this, I have to leave immediately. The
Speaker 1: hotel is surrounded by cartels all over the lobby. Here
Speaker 1: look at us. There was a Microsoft conference and the
Speaker 1: hotel and I'm like, all I see is blue shirts
Speaker 1: with the Microsoft loco in it. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: these are all cartel operatives. They are together and like
Speaker 1: they're Microsoft employees and it's like, no, they work for
Speaker 1: the cartel. They don't know it, but they do. McAfee
Speaker 1: starts to spiral in front of Francois. He says he
Speaker 1: wants a limo with tinted windows to take him to
Speaker 1: the airport. Francois notices that the director has just walked
Speaker 1: into the lobby. He wants to salvage the meeting, He
Speaker 1: offers to drive McAfee to the airport in his own
Speaker 1: car so that the director can sit in the back
Speaker 1: with McAfee and discuss the movie. McAfee agrees. They head
Speaker 1: up to his room to pack. Francois sees McAfee's partner
Speaker 1: Jenesis there, then, I haven't seen any drugs yet, but
Speaker 1: it's it's it's obvious. It's like a state of paranoia.
Speaker 1: There's guns everywhere, loaded guns. His fidgety guns falls out
Speaker 1: of his pocket. Janus technologies they were guns, but denies
Speaker 1: that either of them were high in any event. Francois,
Speaker 1: he's cameraman, McAfee, Janis, and the director all pile into
Speaker 1: the car. So off we drive to the airport. All
Speaker 1: of this is on video by away on a car
Speaker 1: chase with invisible cars, and it's like, okay, they're behind us,
Speaker 1: durned left and there's nobody behind us. They're there. Drive faster.
Speaker 1: I can drive faster. And I mean he's holding a
Speaker 1: gun and waving the gun. Can you just point your
Speaker 1: gun down like, because I'm driving and I want to
Speaker 1: hold it in the back of my head. Now, keep
Speaker 1: in mind the director is in the car the whole time,
Speaker 1: seeing everything. When they arrive at the airport, McAfee and
Speaker 1: Janus leave their guns in Francois's black seat and they
Speaker 1: check in for a flight to the UK. As Francois
Speaker 1: is driving the director back, McAfee calls him with one
Speaker 1: more favor to ask. McAfee says he who left his
Speaker 1: own car at the hotel, and he wants Francois to
Speaker 1: give the keys to one of his security guards, who
Speaker 1: drive it to McAfee's house in Tennessee. Francois finds the
Speaker 1: car in the parking garage as soon as they opened
Speaker 1: the car. I mean I cev the arsenal, using the
Speaker 1: word lightly, an arsenal of weapons, all sizes, all over
Speaker 1: the vehicle, and the bags ziplock bags, probably too well,
Speaker 1: and says each full of this substance inside those ziplock bags,
Speaker 1: according to Francois, was a drug similar to bath salts,
Speaker 1: but even stronger. Later, Francois goes out for dinner and
Speaker 1: drinks with the film director. His reaction to the whole thing,
Speaker 1: according to Francois, was what the hell just happened? But
Speaker 1: as it turns out, their meeting was a success. The
Speaker 1: deal goes through. You're listening to Foundering, I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jamie's harrabay. It's the beginning of the end. When John
Speaker 1: McAfee ran for and lost the Libertarian Party presidential nomination,
Speaker 1: it propelled him to the national stage once again. He
Speaker 1: was on TV regularly discussing politics, civil liberties, and cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: He had largely shrugged off the accusations that he'd murdered
Speaker 1: his neighbor in Belize, and he was able to use
Speaker 1: his fame to court a new sort of wealth, cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: In this chapter of McAfee's life, he becomes a major
Speaker 1: player in the crypto world. With a single tweet, he
Speaker 1: could send the price of a new digital currency soaring.
Speaker 1: He was living large again and evading taxes, but behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, McAfee was deteriorating. His world was composed of guns, drugs,
Speaker 1: delusions that ruled his life for years. McAfee had pushed
Speaker 1: the notion that he was wanted by one government or another.
Speaker 1: This time because of his dealings in crypto and those
Speaker 1: unpaid taxes. Authorities in the United States really are after
Speaker 1: him and they're closing in. We'll tell you more after
Speaker 1: the break. Stories of John McAfee doing synthetic drugs have
Speaker 1: floated around for years. As early as twenty ten, John
Speaker 1: McAfee was posting on a message board called blue Light
Speaker 1: about his experiments with bath salts. The journalist Jeff Wis
Speaker 1: quotes McAfee's writing, I think it's the finest drug ever conceived.
Speaker 1: I had visual and auditory hallucinations and the worst paranoia
Speaker 1: of my life. Over the years, McAfee posted dozens of
Speaker 1: times on this site, which is now defunct. Another journalist,
Speaker 1: Joshua Davis, asked McAfee about these posts, and he insisted
Speaker 1: it was just a big prank, but then McAfee went
Speaker 1: on to describe elaborate hallucinations to the reporter. For what
Speaker 1: it's worth, Janice McAfee describes him more as a drinker.
Speaker 1: Whatever he was on, it made him super annoid. I
Speaker 1: first spoke to Janus in June of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: about a year after John McAfee's death. I specifically wanted
Speaker 1: to ask her about McAfee's repeated insistence that the cartel
Speaker 1: was out to get him. It's a story that Janus
Speaker 1: has corroborated, mostly in tabloids. Like The Daily Mail and
Speaker 1: The Sun, but also in outlets like Newsweek. In fact,
Speaker 1: she said over the years that it was related to
Speaker 1: her past as a sex worker. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: my pimp had been approached by someone who was claiming
Speaker 1: to be a representative of the cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel.
Speaker 1: John McAfee spent years saying that the Sinaloa Cartel was
Speaker 1: after him. It's an international crime ring mostly known for
Speaker 1: drug trafficking. It was led by El Chapo for decades.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of any truth to McAfee's claims about
Speaker 1: the cartel, and the only other person who seemed to
Speaker 1: believe it was Janus. They knew that we were together
Speaker 1: and they wanted to have me be sort of their
Speaker 1: inside man, you know, giving them information. And Janus says
Speaker 1: that her pimp was in on it. His whole thing
Speaker 1: was like, oh my gosh, we're gonna get so much money.
Speaker 1: And my thing was, okay, I'm going to get away
Speaker 1: from you, Like this was my plan. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get I'm going to use the situation to
Speaker 1: get away from you. While we weren't able to verify
Speaker 1: Janice the story, it's been widely documented that women leaving
Speaker 1: this type of sex work often have a difficult time
Speaker 1: shaking off their traffickers. Maybe Janice and McAfee's fears became
Speaker 1: sandwich together. She was convinced the pimp was following her
Speaker 1: every move with macafe, and he was convinced the cartel
Speaker 1: was out to get him. Here's Francois. He ran with
Speaker 1: that story for so long that I think, like any
Speaker 1: good lie, he just at some point he did start
Speaker 1: believing himself. It was interesting because I do believe that
Speaker 1: when he was under the influence of batstols, he did
Speaker 1: believe the paranoia, the invisible men chasing him. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've seen him starting shooting at the walls from inside
Speaker 1: his house. From twenty thirteen through twenty seventeen, Francois was
Speaker 1: actively filming with McAfee, often at his home in Lexington, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I would go to the back door, knock at the door,
Speaker 1: and immediately moved myself out of the frame of the
Speaker 1: door against a brick wall, because the chances that he
Speaker 1: would start shooting from inside the house, blazing bullets out
Speaker 1: of his living room or bedroom. Jana's confirmed the story
Speaker 1: and the situation with the shooting in the house. You know,
Speaker 1: if you heard something where it sounded like someone was
Speaker 1: in are at it, you know, that's what he would do,
Speaker 1: you know, fire, no kind of a warning shot, but
Speaker 1: she claims McAfee had reasons to be alarmed. The pimp
Speaker 1: was still around, she says, and still a threat, and
Speaker 1: Janice blames herself for bringing this source of danger into
Speaker 1: McAfee's life. I really felt really guilty, and I felt
Speaker 1: a lot like the things that were happening around him
Speaker 1: and why he felt so unsaved was because of me?
Speaker 1: Was my fault? Is that why you guys divorced? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: it just were just idn't know that there was really
Speaker 1: a why we divorced. We just we just did. Janice
Speaker 1: and McAfee get divorced in twenty nineteen. They would remain
Speaker 1: partners for the rest of his life. There was always
Speaker 1: a need for me to try to reassure him no,
Speaker 1: that I wasn't trying to do him arm. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do him ARM. So whatever I needed to
Speaker 1: do too to let him know that I was willing
Speaker 1: to do that. Janus didn't go into too many details
Speaker 1: about the divorce, but we know that McAfee was volatile,
Speaker 1: that he had a tendency to push people away. Janus
Speaker 1: managed to hang on to his trust, and my interpretation
Speaker 1: is that the divorce was Janice's way of showing her
Speaker 1: commitment that she would still be there without a claim
Speaker 1: to his money. For Francois, though, the trust that existed
Speaker 1: between him and McAfee that began to wither. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that he started realizing that the projects, it's not
Speaker 1: just a biography that's gonna glorify him and and and
Speaker 1: repeat his side of the story or whatever he says
Speaker 1: at face value. Eventually, the day that probably felt inevitable came,
Speaker 1: McAfee turned on Francois, accusing me being connected to the curtail.
Speaker 1: That's that was part of his m I mean, he
Speaker 1: has He had accused plenty of people in the past
Speaker 1: that they either they had no more use for him
Speaker 1: or they were getting too close for him. That's how
Speaker 1: we would get rid of people. You know why you're
Speaker 1: not talking to to this friend of yours anymore? Oh
Speaker 1: he's my sources just confirmed that he was working with
Speaker 1: the courteils against me. How you know that? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: he just bought a new car. These accusations marked the
Speaker 1: end of their relationship. When we spoke to Francois, his
Speaker 1: documentary on McAfee had been in the works for about
Speaker 1: a decade. Remember, he first started calling news agencies on
Speaker 1: McAfee's behalf in twenty twelve, after Greg Fall's murder in Belize.
Speaker 1: He still plans to release his project. Francois says he
Speaker 1: stopped communicating with McAfee by late twenty seventeen. He then
Speaker 1: watched as McAfee had a sort of career revival by
Speaker 1: tweeting about cryptocurrency. It just went on fire. His following
Speaker 1: started drawing, and the massive crypto community there so that
Speaker 1: he just embraced John. Francois felt like he was seeing
Speaker 1: a whole new community of people taken in by McAfee's
Speaker 1: star power. In spite of his addictions and delusions, McAfee
Speaker 1: would carve out a next chapter as a cryptocurrency prophet.
Speaker 1: That's next. Cryptocurrency became McAfee's major project during the last
Speaker 1: years of his life. Our responsibility, i don't think, is
Speaker 1: to build the ultimate currency, but to understand the power
Speaker 1: that cryptocurrency not developed by governments and institutions, but by people.
Speaker 1: Offers us, for the first time in human history, a
Speaker 1: chance for absolute financial freedom, where your wallet is your bank.
Speaker 1: That's McAfee speaking at a crypto conference in Barcelona in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Cryptocurrencies allow people to anonymously exchange money directly
Speaker 1: with each other. McAfee saw huge potential in this. He
Speaker 1: saw in it a promise of privacy, a world without
Speaker 1: banks or the irs. No one will know what you
Speaker 1: do with your money. Neither should they. It's your fucking money.
Speaker 1: You worked for it. That attitude that the government has
Speaker 1: no business meddling with his money would eventually catch up
Speaker 1: with him. He went all in on crypto in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: starting a new money making scheme. A few people who
Speaker 1: were part of his failed presidential campaign went to work
Speaker 1: for him, and they called themselves Team McAfee. They operated
Speaker 1: out of his house in Tennessee. Jimmy Watson, a former
Speaker 1: Navy seal, joined McAfee's security team. He still remembers his
Speaker 1: first day on the job. John McFee steps out of
Speaker 1: this dark corner in the back of the house. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking across the kitchen and across this living room,
Speaker 1: and it's all dark and there's bullet holes in the
Speaker 1: wall like around his door. Jimmy could see that the
Speaker 1: compound was dedicated to crypto. Everybody in the house, everyone
Speaker 1: even the mate I think, has a computer screen at
Speaker 1: the laptop and they're trading on this crazy which looks
Speaker 1: like the stock market. To me. I had heard a bitcoin,
Speaker 1: just very very slightly. But I remember John McFee like
Speaker 1: kind of laughing and screaming out out like how much
Speaker 1: money made that day. Jimmy hadn't spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time online. He spent much of his adult life in
Speaker 1: the Navy, and then he went on to work for Blackwater,
Speaker 1: the security contractor that massacred Iraqi civilians in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. He said he didn't know anything about digital currency,
Speaker 1: and that McAfee took him under his wing. He taught
Speaker 1: me basically like no other teacher had ever talked to
Speaker 1: me before, and he taught it to be in a
Speaker 1: way that I can understand cryptocurrency. He and McAfee developed
Speaker 1: a close relationship. We look for father figures in our
Speaker 1: life generally psychologically we do. And when we find someone
Speaker 1: in our life said we look up, we look up
Speaker 1: to as a mentor or a father figure. We kind
Speaker 1: of cling onto that individual and did we put him
Speaker 1: on a pedestal. And that's pretty much what happened with
Speaker 1: me and John McFee with less than a year in
Speaker 1: the job, and so his complete surprise, Jimmy says, McAfee
Speaker 1: gave him a new rank and title. He goes, I
Speaker 1: promoted you the CEO two weeks ago on Twitter and
Speaker 1: you didn't see it. You did, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna pay you extra. So with that
Speaker 1: scout relationship we had, Jimmy works all day and all night.
Speaker 1: He doesn't stop, and neither does McAfee. We would be
Speaker 1: up all night, sometimes all night, you know, to four
Speaker 1: or five six in the morning, get maybe two hours
Speaker 1: to sleep and wake up. A normal day with him
Speaker 1: would be to go to the Linkuer store, pick up
Speaker 1: a case of Scotch, like a case, sit at his house.
Speaker 1: He'd blare the TV on loud and he'd do all
Speaker 1: his crypto businesses stuff from his phone, and then maybe
Speaker 1: go to Walmart. He lived a pretty mundane life when
Speaker 1: we weren't traveling because he was very paranoid. He didn't
Speaker 1: want to leave the house. Despite the drinking, the paranoia.
Speaker 1: There was a method to the madness. Team McAfee was
Speaker 1: always moving forward looking into emerging cryptocurrencies. My colleague hammah
Speaker 1: Miller covers crypto, so twenty seventeen was a pivotal time
Speaker 1: in crypto. Tons of new coins coming out all the time.
Speaker 1: It would be impossible for anyone to keep track of
Speaker 1: these projects, and McAfee was a bit of a guide
Speaker 1: to them. Jimmy's job was to read up on all
Speaker 1: the new cryptocurrencies and pass on to McAfee the ones
Speaker 1: that Jimmy thought were unique or interesting. Most of them
Speaker 1: were getting ready to sell their new tokens to the
Speaker 1: public for the first time. If McAfee liked one, he
Speaker 1: or his team would often reach out to the project
Speaker 1: and the offer to promote it on his Twitter account.
Speaker 1: But he usually had an ulterior motive. He might buy
Speaker 1: up that coin himself, so after he promotes it, makes
Speaker 1: it his coin of the day, and the price goes up,
Speaker 1: his own stake would rise, and then he could sell
Speaker 1: that cryptocurrency and make a profit. He would also sometimes
Speaker 1: charge these projects to get promoted by him, and so
Speaker 1: he was really building a business out of you know,
Speaker 1: this idea of becoming a crypto influencer back when that
Speaker 1: was a really new phenomenon. Now it's not illegal to
Speaker 1: do a sponsorship or a promotional deal with crypto companies,
Speaker 1: but what could be considered illegal is to not disclose
Speaker 1: that you're being paid to promote that cryptocurrency or security.
Speaker 1: In addition to working with cryptocurrency companies, McAfee also took
Speaker 1: paid speaking gigs at conferences. He was able to draw
Speaker 1: so much attention to cryptocurrency because he was such an
Speaker 1: a vandalist for the movement. His presence on Twitter was
Speaker 1: very high profile, very colorful. In twenty seventeen, he tweeted
Speaker 1: that the price of a bitcoin would jump to five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars within three years, adding if not, I
Speaker 1: will eat my own dick on national television. For the record,
Speaker 1: bitcoin never got anywhere close to that amount, and McAfee
Speaker 1: didn't make good on his promise. The main business of
Speaker 1: Team McAfee was his coin of the day. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: McAfee chose to promote a project called redcoin, a crypto
Speaker 1: token designed to be used as a tip or gratuity
Speaker 1: on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter. This is
Speaker 1: redcoin's developer, who goes by the pseudonym tech Adept or
Speaker 1: TIA for short, McAfee certainly was on the radar from
Speaker 1: being a bit of a pioneer in the anti virus space.
Speaker 1: He's a computer genius. He's this, you know, but it
Speaker 1: didn't really touch our world at all up until the
Speaker 1: point I checked the data was December twenty fourth, Christmas
Speaker 1: Eve that he actually tweeted out, you know, redcoin, the
Speaker 1: social coin, go for it, and people did. Ta says
Speaker 1: he didn't pay McAfee to promote redcoin. He believes McAfee
Speaker 1: found redcoin on his own. Redcoin isn't the company, it's
Speaker 1: a group of volunteers who dedicate their spare time to it.
Speaker 1: In his tweet, McAfee called red cooin a sleeper and
Speaker 1: the most widely used social network coin in the world.
Speaker 1: It was Christmas Eve and you know, the egg nog
Speaker 1: must have been flowing, and it was a great time.
Speaker 1: But it ended very quickly. Redcoin hit an all time
Speaker 1: high in January twenty eighteen. The crypto data tracker coin
Speaker 1: gecko reported that the price surged sixteen from the month before.
Speaker 1: Redcoin has never broken the record price. It reached after
Speaker 1: McAfee's tweet. Ten months later, members of Team McAfee reached
Speaker 1: out to TA over linked in an email and wanted
Speaker 1: to strike a deal with Redcoin for another promotion from McAfee.
Speaker 1: It was clear they had no memory of the prior promotion,
Speaker 1: which was a major red flag for TA. They mentioned
Speaker 1: a million dollar payment just to be involved, and clearly
Speaker 1: some sort of significant equity in the company, which doesn't
Speaker 1: really exist as such. So I don't even know on
Speaker 1: their team how much communication was going on, but clearly
Speaker 1: they were still looking for customers, partners, people to take
Speaker 1: money from that they could then promote and make a
Speaker 1: bunch of money, and they did. They were they were
Speaker 1: using the crypto community as an ATM. It was November
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen when Team McAfee approached red Coin for that
Speaker 1: paid promotion. Around this time, McAfee and his CEO Jimmy
Speaker 1: had a falling out. I had a sort of a
Speaker 1: mental bakedown, but it was like a spiritual awakening, and
Speaker 1: it was like a vail was lifted off of my eyes,
Speaker 1: as crazy as that sounds, and it's like I could
Speaker 1: see the evil around me and that I just bounced
Speaker 1: and at the cost of pretty much everything to me,
Speaker 1: like I feel utterly used by him. Jimmy says he
Speaker 1: hadn't talked to McAfee since late twenty eighteen or early
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, but he remembered how he felt during that conversation.
Speaker 1: I think he just said, you've played the full Jimmy
Speaker 1: my son basically like I won. And that was really
Speaker 1: hard for me because I had I felt like he
Speaker 1: was like a dad to me, a father, And that's
Speaker 1: what you get for thinking those kind of things in life,
Speaker 1: you know. And it was a huge lesson for me
Speaker 1: to learn. But at this moment, in the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, McAfee has bigger problems than Jimmy all the
Speaker 1: Red coin deal. McAfee gets word that the federal government
Speaker 1: is planning to press charges against him. Janie tells Our
Speaker 1: contributing reporter Matthew Bremner that she and McAfee make plans
Speaker 1: to leave the country. John at gunn he gotten a
Speaker 1: letter from one of his attorneys, and they had said
Speaker 1: that they had been called to give testimony to a
Speaker 1: grand jury. He then gotten word that he himself, myself,
Speaker 1: and four other people were named in this grand jury. Indictment.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to We weren't supposed to know about it,
Speaker 1: but obviously John you know, has his ways to get
Speaker 1: information until he found out about that in November, until
Speaker 1: we ended up leaving on January of the next year,
Speaker 1: January twenty nineteen, go directly to space. No no, no.
Speaker 1: We went to the Bahamas. We drove from Cattara's Island.
Speaker 1: We drove from there down to Miami, and then from
Speaker 1: Miami we took our boat, the Freedom Boat. We were
Speaker 1: unable to confirm this chain of events with McAfee's attorney. However,
Speaker 1: we spoke to a legal expert who told us that
Speaker 1: it's unusual for attorneys to give grand jury testimony during
Speaker 1: a federal investigation. That said, it's very common for people
Speaker 1: under investigation for white collar crimes to know they're being investigated.
Speaker 1: What McAfee did that was uncommon was flee Today January
Speaker 1: twenty seconds, the IRS has convened a grand jury in
Speaker 1: the state of Tennessee to charge myself, my wife, Missus McAfee,
Speaker 1: four of my campaign workers with unspecified IRS crimes of
Speaker 1: a felonious nature. They want to silence me. I will
Speaker 1: not allow that. I am running my campaign in exile
Speaker 1: on this boat. If you didn't catch that, McAfee attempted
Speaker 1: to run for president again as the Libertarian candidate in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election. While he was at c he
Speaker 1: was still very active online and closely followed by the
Speaker 1: crypto community. He insisted he would continue to campaign with
Speaker 1: his partner Janus by his signed even as he was
Speaker 1: being investigated. I will not allow them to imprison me
Speaker 1: and shut my voice down. While he was on the lamp,
Speaker 1: he made this recording that was played to an audience
Speaker 1: on the crypto themed cruise. Hello everyone, I'm John McAfee.
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry I cannot be with you enjoying this
Speaker 1: wonderful cruise that you're on. The reason I'm not with
Speaker 1: you is had I attempted to go, I would have
Speaker 1: been picked up by interbalm and carted off back to
Speaker 1: America to face charges for tax evasion. It is true.
Speaker 1: I have not paid taxes in eight years. I have
Speaker 1: not filed taxes in eight years. I will not file
Speaker 1: taxes again. Jeff Albert is a part at the law
Speaker 1: firm Prior Cashman and a former federal prosecutor with the
Speaker 1: Southern District of New York. Jeff specializes in white color crime.
Speaker 1: He said that McAfee's actions fit the profile of a
Speaker 1: type of crime known as a pump and dump scheme
Speaker 1: involving securities. You take a security that is selling at
Speaker 1: a fairly low price, You buy a bunch of it
Speaker 1: at that low price. Then you make a bunch of
Speaker 1: extravagant claims publicly about the security and how it's likely
Speaker 1: to go up in value. The value then goes up,
Speaker 1: and then you sell all of those securities that you
Speaker 1: bought and make a tidy little profit. Jeff says the
Speaker 1: McAfee name did some heavy lifting in this scheme. Don
Speaker 1: McAfee was well known as somebody who had created antivirus software,
Speaker 1: presumably was very smart, and people viewed him as somebody
Speaker 1: that they could rely on to go in and look
Speaker 1: at a computer science related product and assess whether or
Speaker 1: not it was really valuable. Right now where in a
Speaker 1: legal gray area. Governments have been trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to regulate cryptocurrency. Many of them wanted to treat
Speaker 1: it more like a stock. That way, they could use
Speaker 1: existing rules to discourage people from manipulating the market or
Speaker 1: trying to gain unfair advantages to make money. John McAfee
Speaker 1: became one of their first high profile targets. On October fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the SEC charged McAfee and Jimmy Watson with
Speaker 1: fraudulently promoting cryptocurrencies to McAfee's Twitter followers without disclosing they
Speaker 1: were being paid to do so. Federal prosecutors at the
Speaker 1: Justice Department came out with similar charges in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: In total, McAfee and Jimmy were accused of committing a
Speaker 1: thirteen million dollar fraud. After he left McAfee, Jimmy lived abroad.
Speaker 1: He kept busy doing contract work. He never crossed paths
Speaker 1: with his former boss again. Jimmy declines to go into
Speaker 1: detail about why he moved overseas, and he didn't have
Speaker 1: a good explanation for why he did what he did. Next,
Speaker 1: which is with a federal indictment hanging over his head,
Speaker 1: he goes back to the US. In March twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: he travels to Texas to see family and renew his passport.
Speaker 1: I was with my mom outside at a coffee shop.
Speaker 1: A little did I know the FBI had been watching
Speaker 1: my house and following me. These are two SUVs just
Speaker 1: pulled up really fast, guns in my face, fingers on sugar,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, yelling at you get on the ground.
Speaker 1: I'm only conserved with my mom. I was a mom,
Speaker 1: Get mom back up. This is bad. That was it.
Speaker 1: They rescued me, you know. Jimmy's spent five days in
Speaker 1: a federal penitentiary before being released under a ten million
Speaker 1: dollar bail and house arrest. He pleaded not guilty. Just
Speaker 1: over a year later, a federal judge ordered Jimmy to
Speaker 1: pay almost four hundred thousand dollars in fines and banned
Speaker 1: him from buying and selling any digital assets security. It
Speaker 1: was near the end of the road from McAfee as well.
Speaker 1: He'd fled the United States in haste in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: after years of saying he was being chased. He really
Speaker 1: was wanted by the US government on several charges, and
Speaker 1: he would spend the next few years flitting from one
Speaker 1: foreign city to another, attempting to disguise his whereabouts. And Jimmy,
Speaker 1: who'd spent so much time traveling with McAfee before their split,
Speaker 1: he had a strong sense of what McAfee was up to.
Speaker 1: We did go to Spain, he hung out with Russians.
Speaker 1: They're very, very powerful, successful Russians. When I heard that
Speaker 1: he was arrested in Spain, I knew that he was.
Speaker 1: He had been with them, and these are very powerful man.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too far into it, just
Speaker 1: to protect myself. McAfee's last stand, that's next time on Foundering,
Speaker 1: The John mccafee story. Foundering is hosted by me Jamie
Speaker 1: Tera Bay Sean When is our executive producer. Hannah Miller
Speaker 1: and Matthew Bremner contributed reporting to this episode special thanks
Speaker 1: to Young Young and Eileena Pen for help with production.
Speaker 1: Molly Nugent is our associate producer. Sharif Josef is our
Speaker 1: audio engineer and editorial assistant. Mark Million and Vandermay, Molly
Speaker 1: should and Andy Martin are our story editors. Be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe and if you like our show, leave a review.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, tell your friends see you next time.