Speaker 1: It's January twenty nineteen and John McAfee is at sea.
Speaker 1: He's fleeing the United States after hearing that he was
Speaker 1: being investigated for tax evasion. He's with his partner Janus,
Speaker 1: their dogs, and security guards, sailing his boat from Miami
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean. The photojournalist Robert King is there too,
Speaker 1: filming the whole thing. Through the course of the journey,
Speaker 1: McAfee is seen drinking and smoking, and there are shots
Speaker 1: of ziploc bags with what looked like synthetic drugs. For King,
Speaker 1: documenting McAfee's travels was an exhausting assignment because there was
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, mind altering substances and alcohol,
Speaker 1: and we were sleeping with guns, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was nuts. McAfee, though, seems oddly at ease when he's
Speaker 1: talking to King. Remember they go back to his days
Speaker 1: in Belize when King was filming there for Vice. As
Speaker 1: they make for the Dominican Republic, McAfee tells King, this
Speaker 1: is the most important video he's ever made. I will
Speaker 1: fabricate whatever reality I see fifth to keep eyeballs on us. Robert,
Speaker 1: are we clearly do you have a problem with that.
Speaker 1: I'm near the album. This is a clip from the
Speaker 1: Netflix film Running with the Devil, The Wild World of
Speaker 1: John McAfee. You can hear McAfee start to come upon.
Speaker 1: If this one does not sell your fucking footage, nothing will, Robert,
Speaker 1: nothing will. Do you understand I have created this story?
Speaker 1: Do you understand? I have fabricated a perception that is
Speaker 1: matchment reality, ran jury's indictments, foreign countries, guns, that Uni video.
Speaker 1: So you tell me that this is not gold. It
Speaker 1: is gold. I really take in this golf and like
Speaker 1: fives check artis have woven it into the most magnificent
Speaker 1: jewels you must see. So it's hard to say what
Speaker 1: was real and what was theater? I mean, because he
Speaker 1: was he wasn't he he did Shakespeare plays. I mean
Speaker 1: he was extremely intelligent, well read. But I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that is psychosis too. When they dock in
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic, everyone winds up in jail because their
Speaker 1: boat is loaded with cash, actual bricks of gold, drugs,
Speaker 1: and guns. McAfee did not want to get sent back
Speaker 1: to the US and face the American justice system. They
Speaker 1: all get deported. King is sent back to Tennessee. McAfee,
Speaker 1: who was born in England uses his UK passport to
Speaker 1: get him and janis transported to Europe. He will never
Speaker 1: set foot in America again. You're listening to Foundering. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Jamie Tara Bay. In the final episode of
Speaker 1: this season, we retrace the last days of John McAfee.
Speaker 1: He's speaking at tech conferences and getting deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: into the dark side of crypto, all the while he's
Speaker 1: staggering across Europe. He's terrified of spending the rest of
Speaker 1: his life in an American prison, and yet he cannot
Speaker 1: resist the spotlight. He baits authorities with teasing tweets that
Speaker 1: hide his location but show a continued, reckless defiance. He's
Speaker 1: in his seventies, his paranoia is surging, his associates are fleeing,
Speaker 1: and he's left isolated, increasingly erratic and desperate. Success in
Speaker 1: business brings a sort of currency, not just money. People
Speaker 1: like McAfee, who started his own company, became a household name,
Speaker 1: and helped create an industry. There's a cultural currency that
Speaker 1: comes with that too, a cybersecurity legend. John McAfee pioneered
Speaker 1: the anti virus industry full stop. John was a super
Speaker 1: genius man. He really does me yeah, our introduction, mister
Speaker 1: John Jobs Gates Bazos. We practically worship these figures. For
Speaker 1: a fleeting period in the late nineteen eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: McAfee belonged to this club. He understood the power of
Speaker 1: this currency, and he used it to an extreme that
Speaker 1: none of his peers did. He weaponized it the money
Speaker 1: and celebrity he accrued the enablers he surrounded himself with.
Speaker 1: McAfee often used these to benefit himself and to do
Speaker 1: harm up until the very end, and in those final days,
Speaker 1: there was very little left of the life McAfee once lived,
Speaker 1: except for one thing, his daughter Jen. McAfee had Jen
Speaker 1: with his first wife, Fran. We heard from Fran at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this season. She was the eighteen year
Speaker 1: old student in the math class McAfee was teaching in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: It was like living on the largest roller coaster in
Speaker 1: the world. So she had these tremendous highs, but then
Speaker 1: you bottom down and that was life. McAfee had a
Speaker 1: tumultuous relationship ship with his daughter too. Jen has rarely
Speaker 1: spoken in public, preferring to keep as much of her
Speaker 1: life private as possible. She declined to be interviewed, but
Speaker 1: her lawyer spoke on her behalf. Jen's had a lifetime
Speaker 1: to watch her father put his foibles and idiosyncrasies on
Speaker 1: display for the world to see, but they had moments
Speaker 1: of intense love where he exhibited his devotion to her.
Speaker 1: One example we found in our reporting is that during
Speaker 1: Jen's teenage meltdowns at home with her mother, she would
Speaker 1: ask for her dad. McAfee would fly often across the
Speaker 1: country within twenty four hours to be with her. There
Speaker 1: were other moments too. Here's Jen's lawyer, Joy Athanasiu. Jen
Speaker 1: and Joy have been friends since childhood. We had gone
Speaker 1: a visit and she was pregnant. His home in Woodland,
Speaker 1: her Colorado was very mountainous, with some cabins throughout the property,
Speaker 1: but it was a considerable hike to get to these cabins,
Speaker 1: and there was a point where she needed to slow
Speaker 1: down because, if I remember correctly, she was quite pregnant
Speaker 1: at that point. And he was really really attentive to
Speaker 1: her needs and really protective of her, but he could
Speaker 1: also be incredibly spiteful. The ups and downs in their
Speaker 1: relationship prompted him to rant to various people that children
Speaker 1: were the worst and no one should ever have them.
Speaker 1: Jen is the only known child of McAfee, although he
Speaker 1: once tweeted that he'd fathered forty seven children. We learned
Speaker 1: he posted that after he and jan had had a
Speaker 1: particularly bad phone call. McAfee had a lot of complicated relationships.
Speaker 1: He alienated a lot of people, and by twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: it was just McAfee and his partner Janus. The couple
Speaker 1: arrived in London in late July after being deported from
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. McAfee kept up a steady presence on Twitter,
Speaker 1: making claims about his whereabouts that were almost certainly fabrications,
Speaker 1: but by October he'd made his way to Spain. Here
Speaker 1: he is giving a speech on stage at a blockchain
Speaker 1: conference in Barcelona. Governments are just now starting to see
Speaker 1: the blockchain and cryptocurrency as an opportunity or a threat
Speaker 1: or something to fear. We asked Janus when they had
Speaker 1: come to Spain and why, and we were surprised that
Speaker 1: she was Heiji. Okay, so I can't really say when
Speaker 1: we arrived in Spain. The friends that were assisting Johnny,
Speaker 1: you know, those were John's friends, and there was an
Speaker 1: expectation of privacy that I want to be sure I'm respecting.
Speaker 1: She told us she was worried for her safety. She
Speaker 1: thought she'd been followed while shopping, and she didn't know
Speaker 1: who to trust. It was McAfee's relentless tweeting over the
Speaker 1: ensuing months that ultimately revealed his movements. Images he posted
Speaker 1: from his daily life caught the attention of at least
Speaker 1: one amateur sleuth, who goes by the name Senor Bigottis
Speaker 1: Catalan for mister Mustache. Here's our contributing reporter, Matthew Bremner.
Speaker 1: So we got a tip from Senor Bigottis and he
Speaker 1: told us to go to a tattoo parlor where we
Speaker 1: know McAfee visited a couple of times. It's called Scorpio Tattoo.
Speaker 1: It's in the center of Gambrills, and we spoke to
Speaker 1: the owner, Santiago Quebas. Cambriel's is a tiny beach community
Speaker 1: on Catalonia's Golden Coast, south of the Rocky Parades Mountains
Speaker 1: and ninety minutes from Barcelona by car. The population is
Speaker 1: just thirty thousand people. Santiago says McAfee came to his
Speaker 1: shop in late twenty nineteen. He knew exactly what he wanted.
Speaker 1: I was struck by it because I said, what is
Speaker 1: this you want? He said, well, look, this is like
Speaker 1: a word, a symbol of mine to know that I
Speaker 1: am alive. The tattoo that McAfee wanted was the word whacked.
Speaker 1: That tattoo became famous, a totem for McAfee's followers to brandish,
Speaker 1: alongside conspiracies that he'd been a wanted man who wouldn't
Speaker 1: go quietly. He was convinced that powerful people wanted to
Speaker 1: kill him, and he advertised it on Twitter to make
Speaker 1: sure everyone knew. Santiago didn't know any of this at
Speaker 1: the time. He didn't even know what the word whacked meant,
Speaker 1: but McAfee left an impression on him. They chatted a
Speaker 1: lot over the hour and a half McAfee was in
Speaker 1: his chair. I thought he was quite a funny person, ugly,
Speaker 1: very nice. At the time. I didn't know who he
Speaker 1: was until I got a call from a newspaper in
Speaker 1: Tarragona and they told me. By the next year, things
Speaker 1: changed sharply from McAfee and his quiet existence in Spain.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty begins with the rapid spread of the coronavirus,
Speaker 1: sending the world into crisis. Spain is among the hardest hit.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, the country is forced into an extraordinary lockdown.
Speaker 1: The Twitter sleuth Senor Bigottis notices that McAfee's showcasing he's
Speaker 1: defiance of those restrictions in his tweets at the beginning.
Speaker 1: He was in Tarragona, I think, and he was the
Speaker 1: few people that he was outside in the in the street.
Speaker 1: I thought, this guy is gonna have problems. Here's our reporter, Matthew.
Speaker 1: Spain has one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.
Speaker 1: Military on the streets, police are everywhere. And it's at
Speaker 1: this time that Senor Bigottis finds himself really tracking the
Speaker 1: whereabouts of John McAfee quite closely. Something to know about
Speaker 1: Senor Bigottis is he's just a guy who's bored online.
Speaker 1: He's locked in COVID quarantine like everyone else, and this
Speaker 1: is a way to pass the time. And in case
Speaker 1: you were wondering, mister mustache does have a mustache. It
Speaker 1: was funny for me because just in the beginning he
Speaker 1: has a picture peeking in the parking of McDonald's. If
Speaker 1: he didn't catch that he says, he finds a picture
Speaker 1: of McAfee peeing in the parking lot of a McDonald's
Speaker 1: and this is where he starts noticing very familiar things,
Speaker 1: things very close to home. On McAfee's Twitter feet he
Speaker 1: published a video near the beach, I could see a park,
Speaker 1: a child park. That's it's here. In Gambriel's he realizes
Speaker 1: that McAfee is in his hometown. I see some pictures
Speaker 1: and identify that he was in this National road National
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty. About a mile outside of town,
Speaker 1: just off a busy main road, is an abandoned hotel
Speaker 1: called Daurada Park. This is where Senor Begottis believes McAfee
Speaker 1: was staying. In early twenty twenty, Matthew visited the hotel.
Speaker 1: So the roof of the main entrance there is falling down.
Speaker 1: There's a big chunk out of it, as if someone
Speaker 1: had taken like a bite out of it. However, there
Speaker 1: is a security camera there. The hotel hasn't been operating
Speaker 1: in any official capacity since twenty seventeen. UM. There are
Speaker 1: no tourists here, that's for sure. On those balconies there
Speaker 1: is evidence that people are living there, So there are tables,
Speaker 1: their plants, their mosquito nets. In twenty eighteen, about a
Speaker 1: year after receiving its last guest, the police raided the hotel.
Speaker 1: Here's Rebecca Carunco, a crime reporter for the newspaper L
Speaker 1: Bays who covered McAfee's time in Spain. So beens that
Speaker 1: want people. The local authorities thought there was some sort
Speaker 1: of illegal activity going on there, related to a brothel
Speaker 1: or something like that, but then they raid the place
Speaker 1: and find out it's a crypto mine. Of course, a
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency mine in itself is not an illegal thing. It's
Speaker 1: just that some people who have cryptocurrency farms are often
Speaker 1: illegally tapping the electric supply. Matthew says it's an unusual
Speaker 1: place to have a crypto mine, mainly because the energy
Speaker 1: bills are high there, and well it's just really hot
Speaker 1: and supercomputer as well. They need to be kept cool.
Speaker 1: So it would be much more likely to find a
Speaker 1: crypto mine in a place like Alaska or Canada, and
Speaker 1: not on Spain's Mediterranean coast. Authorities found nothing illegal happening
Speaker 1: with the operation. No one was arrested, no assets were seized,
Speaker 1: the crypto mine was left intact. It flew under the
Speaker 1: radar until McAfee started uploading photos and videos in early
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Senior Bigotis talks to us about one video
Speaker 1: in particular, which shows acafee at a bar with Janis
Speaker 1: talking to two Russians or Russian speakers, and they're teaching
Speaker 1: him and Janis how to speak Russian. I would like
Speaker 1: to introduce Janis and our Russian coaches, job Smith America.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of speculation about this connection between
Speaker 1: McAfee and Russians in both the Spanish and international press
Speaker 1: of late For example, the Daily Mail called the hotel
Speaker 1: at the Park a ghost hotel which is owned by
Speaker 1: an unnamed Russian businessman. It all sounds very vague, and
Speaker 1: these shady references to Russians, I mean, it sounds a
Speaker 1: bit like a bad nineteen eighties Hollywood action film. But
Speaker 1: I mean that's where we are at the moment. No
Speaker 1: one who was close to McAfee at the time would
Speaker 1: tell us much about his associates, but Janus says their
Speaker 1: collaboration dated back to at least twenty eighteen. Janus also
Speaker 1: confirmed that she and McAfee had spent time at the
Speaker 1: Dawdada Park Hotel. We weren't able to get ahold of
Speaker 1: McAfee's associates in Spain. McAfee seemed to enjoy cultivating this
Speaker 1: air of mystery around them. The idea that they were
Speaker 1: powerful people with important connections in Russia appears to have
Speaker 1: been concocted by McAfee himself. From what we could gather,
Speaker 1: it seemed to be just another group of people trying
Speaker 1: to squeeze money for themselves out of crypto desperate enough
Speaker 1: or maybe savvy enough to hitch their wagon to McAfee.
Speaker 1: The crypto operation gives gafee enough cash to continue traveling.
Speaker 1: In the summer of twenty twenty, he's railing publicly about
Speaker 1: the loss of personal freedom the pandemic has caused, and
Speaker 1: he was making a joke of the health crisis on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I just put on my Twitter account a few hours ago.
Speaker 1: I'm auctioning off my COVID nineteen masks, which all made
Speaker 1: from women's underwear, all right, and Janis first of all
Speaker 1: wears them to stretch them and soften them. And the
Speaker 1: charges from the US against McAfee are still not public,
Speaker 1: but the net is tightening. He receives a notice from
Speaker 1: Google saying the IRS is asking for information about his account.
Speaker 1: Janis gets a similar message, and yet McAfee can't stop tweeting,
Speaker 1: discussing American foreign policy, talking about all the girlfriends who
Speaker 1: tried to kill him. And then on October third, a Saturday,
Speaker 1: McAfee is at the airport in Barcelona. He's about to
Speaker 1: board a flight to Istanbul, but his passport gets flagged
Speaker 1: and police take him into custody. Here's a report from Reuters.
Speaker 1: US federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment against McAfee overcharges that
Speaker 1: he evaded taxes and wipefully failed to file returns for decades.
Speaker 1: He'd done everything possible to avoid accountability, dodging process servers,
Speaker 1: faking a heart attack, and sailing to the Caribbean to
Speaker 1: evade American authorities. There was no escape from this. Here's
Speaker 1: Rebecca the Lpius reporter. When he is arrested, it's a
Speaker 1: local judge from Catalonia who looks at what evidence there
Speaker 1: is and whether they put him in prison or not. Imprision,
Speaker 1: the judge decides that McAfee is a flight risk and
Speaker 1: should be locked up. Almost three weeks after his arrest,
Speaker 1: Janice posts an audio recording McAfee made from prison. She
Speaker 1: now has control over his Twitter account and posts updates
Speaker 1: on his behalf. I love you all and I miss
Speaker 1: being able to share videos and photos with you. It
Speaker 1: is impossible for America to extradite me. I do believe this.
Speaker 1: The documentation they have discovered about me, they simply pulls
Speaker 1: out of their ass And the Spanish people on Spanish
Speaker 1: courts are not stupid. So I do not work. I
Speaker 1: may even get out on bail in a week or two,
Speaker 1: and if not, I will eventually be The intention here
Speaker 1: might be to reassure his fans that he'll be released,
Speaker 1: but to me, it sounds more like he's trying to
Speaker 1: convince himself. He's slower, hesitant, even pensive. He almost sounds defeated.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. John McAfee was facing a tough
Speaker 1: legal fight using money he apparently obtained through his crypto work.
Speaker 1: He hired several attorneys to argue his case. There was
Speaker 1: Niche Sannon. My name is Niche Santon. I'm a federal
Speaker 1: criminal defense attorney in Chicago. I have an office in
Speaker 1: New York. I also work on international tradition matters and
Speaker 1: practiced federal criminal trial work around the country. On the
Speaker 1: crypto side, there was Andrew Gordon. My name is Andrew Gordon.
Speaker 1: I'm the managing attorney and president at Gordon Law in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and we are a corporate tax and cryptocurrency law firm.
Speaker 1: McAfee had another two attorneys in Spain on various fronts.
Speaker 1: They were fighting the DJ and SEC charges and the
Speaker 1: extradition request. Andrew spoke to McAfee regularly about the case.
Speaker 1: I asked him how McAfee sounded when they spoke, Very
Speaker 1: positive spirits, very upbeat. Now, certainly prison is no favorable
Speaker 1: place to be in, but he would always talk about
Speaker 1: how popular he was in the prison and how respected
Speaker 1: as the old man in the prison and really is
Speaker 1: trying to make the best of it. McAfee would spend
Speaker 1: his last eight and a half months in Brand's to prison.
Speaker 1: The prison is forty five minutes outside of Barcelona. It's
Speaker 1: near the town of Martorel. So Matthew went to visit
Speaker 1: the site in the spring of twenty twenty two. The
Speaker 1: prison itself is this kind of nineteen seventies concrete monstrosity,
Speaker 1: and in the background you can sort of see the
Speaker 1: big wire fences which are about I don't know, three
Speaker 1: to four meters tall. And then there are these green
Speaker 1: roofed warehouses, which I assume are the cellbox where mac
Speaker 1: if you, probably spent a lot of his time. Matthew
Speaker 1: is there with Founderings executive producer Sean when they walk
Speaker 1: deeper inside the complex, beyond several checkpoints and the first
Speaker 1: bend in the road, but it starts to get quiet.
Speaker 1: There is no one around, only what looks like the
Speaker 1: prisoners entrance up ahead. But then the police car pulls up,
Speaker 1: so this is the police tell Matthew and Sean to
Speaker 1: leave the kick that they returned to the main entrance.
Speaker 1: In the hallway, they made a prison worker who says
Speaker 1: she knew McAfee. Do you remember if he had a
Speaker 1: lot of visitors. I can't give you this information, it's confidential,
Speaker 1: but I will only say he was a nice man
Speaker 1: to deal with. McAfee was very active on Twitter throughout
Speaker 1: his time in prison, describing the food and fellow inmates.
Speaker 1: But over time McAfee's mood changed, and this too was
Speaker 1: reflected in his tweets. Titles a tweet Notes from Prison,
Speaker 1: and he says, my body's confined. My mind has always
Speaker 1: been confined by fears, longings, ambitions, escapes from boredom, A
Speaker 1: prisoner of my own desires, circum stands move me from
Speaker 1: one prison to the other. There's little difference. His words
Speaker 1: are revealing because in a way, it's McAfee being honest
Speaker 1: in public for one of the first times in his life.
Speaker 1: He was struggling mentally, emotionally, and physically. McAfee and his
Speaker 1: lawyers argue in an extradition hearing that he's old and
Speaker 1: weak with a chronic lung condition. They say even a
Speaker 1: few years in jail could be a death sentence. If
Speaker 1: I am extraditement to the US, please translate it, I
Speaker 1: will certainly spend the rest of my life in prison
Speaker 1: conversed according to jail, all these things into consideration. Thank you.
Speaker 1: McAfee's lost weight. His hair is dark and pulled back
Speaker 1: from his face. He's hunched over. We were told that
Speaker 1: when McAfee's daughter watched this video from the hearing, she
Speaker 1: said he didn't even look like himself. A week later,
Speaker 1: the Spanish court decided to grant the US government's extradition request.
Speaker 1: Janner spoke to McAfee on the morning of June twenty third,
Speaker 1: he just returned from court. Our conversation was not There
Speaker 1: was nothing different in his voice. There was no change
Speaker 1: of his attitude. There was no He didn't sound down
Speaker 1: or depressed or anything. He actually was like, okay, so
Speaker 1: what's the attorney's working on. You know, I understand that
Speaker 1: we got this appeal and he was wanting to know, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's on the next steps that we're going to do,
Speaker 1: so you know, we can move forward in five days.
Speaker 1: Breaking news on your Wednesday afternoon. John McAfee, the creator
Speaker 1: of the McAfee anti virus software, has been found dead
Speaker 1: in his jail cell in Spain. Seventy five year old
Speaker 1: was arrested last October at the International Airport in Barstow.
Speaker 1: It's been a challenge trying to ascertain exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: In the early evening of June twenty third. Inside McAfee's cell,
Speaker 1: Janice told us that she'd been given a report on
Speaker 1: the investigation into the events of that day, but she
Speaker 1: wouldn't show it to us. Neither the police nor the
Speaker 1: court would say anything about the case, citing strict privacy
Speaker 1: laws in Spain. We know though, that at six pm
Speaker 1: When guards opened the door to McAfee's cell, they found
Speaker 1: him hanging from something attached to the window. John McAfee,
Speaker 1: the cybersecurity pioneer, the accused murderer and fraudster about to
Speaker 1: be extradited to face the American justice system, is dead
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy five. But Rebecca, the crime reporter,
Speaker 1: said Catalonia officials issued a press release announcing his death
Speaker 1: in prison. So I start calling police officers that I
Speaker 1: know who have ties to the area where this happened.
Speaker 1: Her contacts tell her that they believe McAfee was left
Speaker 1: alone in his cell for a couple of hours and
Speaker 1: that's when he killed himself. From the beginning, the police
Speaker 1: tell me that there might be a suicide note. A
Speaker 1: prison officer reports finding what appeared to be a suicide
Speaker 1: note in McAfee's pocket. It reads, I am a phantom parasite.
Speaker 1: I want to control my future, which does not exist.
Speaker 1: Janis shared this note on Twitter. We asked several people
Speaker 1: close to McAfee, who told us that the handwriting and
Speaker 1: the style are definitely his. The coroner rules his death
Speaker 1: a suicide. The case goes to a local court for review.
Speaker 1: The judge said, Okay, with everything I have, I have
Speaker 1: no indication that there is anything strange about this suicide.
Speaker 1: Rebecca says. In Spain, all violent deaths, including suicides, are investigated.
Speaker 1: The Spanish penal code considers suicide as a form of
Speaker 1: violent death. Why well, because you kill yourself. Andrew Gordon,
Speaker 1: McAfee's lawyer in Chicago found out when a reporter called
Speaker 1: his office with the news. She called me and said,
Speaker 1: asking for a comment on John's death. This is just bullshit.
Speaker 1: That's just you know, someone pulling her leg to get lost. Um.
Speaker 1: Then we got the second call, and then I started
Speaker 1: searching on the internet, and then I reached out to Janis,
Speaker 1: and Janis at that time was going through the literal
Speaker 1: same experience where she was finding out on the news
Speaker 1: in Barcelona. Janus struggled with the bureaucracy. She didn't understand
Speaker 1: why she couldn't see the body right away. When the
Speaker 1: Spanish authorities eventually grunted her access, she only saw McAfee
Speaker 1: from behind a window. It's likely Janus was kept in
Speaker 1: a different room because of COVID restrictions, but it just
Speaker 1: compounded her perception that Spanish authorities were involved in a
Speaker 1: cover up, and I think it's very telling that here
Speaker 1: I am a year later and I still can't get
Speaker 1: his body. Remember, Janis told us that she had been
Speaker 1: given a report on the investigation into the events of
Speaker 1: that day, but again she wouldn't show it to us.
Speaker 1: Janas says there was a brief discrepancy in the description
Speaker 1: of the noose. At first the police said he used
Speaker 1: a shoe string, and then later called it a rope.
Speaker 1: This could easily be explained by a clerical error, but
Speaker 1: Jana seized on it as yet another clue of something suspicious. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think from the very beginning I didn't believe it,
Speaker 1: and so these things were just confirmation. Janice is determined
Speaker 1: to get her own independent autopsy report to prove that
Speaker 1: McAfee didn't take his own life. She's latched onto the
Speaker 1: theory that he was murdered. She believes someone drugged and
Speaker 1: strangled him. And it's hard to I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just hard to move forward. It's hard to think about
Speaker 1: anything else because I just want to have these answers.
Speaker 1: I just want, you know, I just want't be done
Speaker 1: with this part. Court delays and the lack of information
Speaker 1: have fueled the perception that the Spanish authorities have something
Speaker 1: to hide. The Internet is awash with conspiracy theories. The
Speaker 1: circumstances played perfectly to McAfee's fan base. He'd been saying
Speaker 1: for years he was wanted, that people were out to
Speaker 1: get him. He got it tattooed on his arm. He
Speaker 1: said he'd never kill himself, that if he was found
Speaker 1: hanging like Jeffrey Epstein, it could only be a hit job.
Speaker 1: The absence of any kind of resolution has even one
Speaker 1: of McAfee's lawyers believing it wasn't a suicide. I think
Speaker 1: you blamed either cover uprespacidity. That's niche Sannon again. I
Speaker 1: mean there's two extremes in it, and I just can't
Speaker 1: believe a government is that stupid. So it's got to
Speaker 1: be a cover up. I mean, what else is there?
Speaker 1: What else has left? The timing of it is suspicious,
Speaker 1: the way it supposedly happened is suspicious. And for him
Speaker 1: to say it's going to happen, none of this adds up.
Speaker 1: It wasn't John's personality to do something like this. But
Speaker 1: Rebecca has covered the Spanish police for years and has
Speaker 1: at times written critically of their methods, But she says
Speaker 1: a cover up is unlikely and that the real issue
Speaker 1: is their policy of silence on open cases. In the
Speaker 1: absence of information, she says, conspiracy theories can flourish. Look
Speaker 1: my newspaper reacted by saying, this is a story of
Speaker 1: global international interest. We have to cover it. But there
Speaker 1: was none of that interest on the part of authorities.
Speaker 1: They didn't call a press conference where they made it
Speaker 1: super clear what had happened. They weren't transparent. Now everyone
Speaker 1: is wondering what happened to him? So why is the
Speaker 1: state being so tight lipped? But Rebecca thinks it has
Speaker 1: something to do with embarrassment. And when a person who
Speaker 1: is in custody, who is in the custody of the administration,
Speaker 1: ends up committing suicide, there is negligence of some kind.
Speaker 1: You do have to do some kind of critical reflection
Speaker 1: on that. Some six months after his death, prosecutors in
Speaker 1: both New York and Tennessee applied to have their cases
Speaker 1: against McAfee dismissed. Meanwhile, McAfee's body remains in a morgue
Speaker 1: in Barcelona. McAfee's Spanish lawyer, Javier Villalba, says that Janus
Speaker 1: is appealing the judges ruling of suicide to a higher
Speaker 1: court and they're waiting to hear whether the case would
Speaker 1: be accepted, he told us in a WhatsApp message. From
Speaker 1: our point of view, the autopsy report from the government
Speaker 1: is incomplete. This is why it's taking so long to
Speaker 1: repatriate the body, because as long as this case is open,
Speaker 1: McAfee's remains can't go anywhere. We'll be right back. While
Speaker 1: McAfee's body is stuck in limbo, his family is left
Speaker 1: in another kind of purgatory. Janus's legal appeals prevent the
Speaker 1: people who were close to McAfee from being able to
Speaker 1: bury him, and his money has apparently vanished. In conversations
Speaker 1: with Janus and the attorneys were told McAfee did not
Speaker 1: leave an estate. That's what he said to me. He
Speaker 1: didn't have a will when whatever crypto he had that
Speaker 1: was his crypto, So I don't know what would have
Speaker 1: happened to that or wallets. I don't you know. Obviously
Speaker 1: I had access to his phone, but that information wasn't there,
Speaker 1: so wherever that was, I don't know. Remember, McAfee has
Speaker 1: two multimillion dollar lawsuits against him that are outstanding the
Speaker 1: aerotrekking wrongful death, and the killing of his neighbor. In
Speaker 1: belize any money left in an estate would likely go
Speaker 1: to pay those judgments. His lawyer said, we know McAfee
Speaker 1: made a habit of buying assets and putting them in
Speaker 1: other people's names. It was one of the things noted
Speaker 1: in the indictment for tax evasion. We heard that he
Speaker 1: rarely had money on hand, something Janus confirmed. Were you
Speaker 1: that John didn't have any money at the end, he
Speaker 1: didn't have he was cash poor. Yeah, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was the one here with him, I was the
Speaker 1: one that when his money ran out, I used my money,
Speaker 1: you know, my money which was separate from his, you know,
Speaker 1: to pay for lawyers right, to make sure he had
Speaker 1: money on his books and he had what he needed.
Speaker 1: And yet Janice also told us that McAfee had taken
Speaker 1: care of her financially. She described her situation as comfortable.
Speaker 1: McAfee's daughter, Jen has said that she has no interest
Speaker 1: in his money or in pushing for an investigation. She would, however,
Speaker 1: like to put an end to a newer conspiracy that
Speaker 1: McAfee faked his own death. Jen's being deluged by people
Speaker 1: telling her that McAfee has been spotted in Texas. There's
Speaker 1: one really effective way to shut this noise down, says
Speaker 1: her lawyer Joy. The only thing that she would like
Speaker 1: is she would like his remains to be released. She
Speaker 1: is a person of faith. It has been very, very
Speaker 1: difficult for her to think about his being kept by
Speaker 1: the Spanish government and not being allowed to have him
Speaker 1: laid at rest, and she wants to do everything possible
Speaker 1: to prevent any further delay. She does not contest the
Speaker 1: findings of the court that he died by suicide. Jen
Speaker 1: knew her father longer than just about anybody, longer than
Speaker 1: his team of lawyers, certainly longer than his Twitter fans
Speaker 1: who propelled the conspiracies about his death. Jen knew who
Speaker 1: he was, and she witnessed, both in public and in private,
Speaker 1: his self destruction. There were times in the last few
Speaker 1: years where they had conversations and it was apparent that
Speaker 1: he was not sober, and of course he could be
Speaker 1: very dismissive, and you know, that's that's that's an effect
Speaker 1: of drinking and of addiction. Sadly, at the beginning of
Speaker 1: this season, I mentioned that when McAfee tells the story
Speaker 1: of his life. He always starts it in the same
Speaker 1: way he talks about his father, a violent alcoholic. Nobody
Speaker 1: has an ideal life, even children. Dad. When you're fifteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: they have shot himself. He shot himself. Yeah. People always
Speaker 1: looked at the beast to explain the present. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. McAfee set out to defy the example
Speaker 1: his father set for him, but in the end, he's
Speaker 1: drinking and substance abuse, his volatile temper, the strained relationship
Speaker 1: with his daughter all seemed to point to the same destination.
Speaker 1: It also fits that a man who escaped accountability at
Speaker 1: every turn in his life was caught like others who
Speaker 1: thought they were above the law, by something as simple
Speaker 1: as not paying your taxes. And maybe the prospect of
Speaker 1: being forced to do something he'd bragged he would never
Speaker 1: do was something that his arrogance couldn't tolerate. I always
Speaker 1: wanted to know who his lifelong friends were, the people
Speaker 1: who'd stayed with him through it all. I was told
Speaker 1: he didn't have any Most of the ones who stuck
Speaker 1: around were there because they benefited from him. I heard
Speaker 1: he would discard people when they no longer were useful
Speaker 1: to him. Nearly everyone we spoke to said that felt
Speaker 1: manipulated by him, conned by him, betrayed by him. That
Speaker 1: he was the ultimate hype man who could sell anyone anything.
Speaker 1: The final con was a promise he'd made publicly that
Speaker 1: a flood of embarrassing and dangerous information would be released
Speaker 1: upon his death, a so called dead man's switch. It's
Speaker 1: what the conspiracists have been waiting so long for, but
Speaker 1: no data trove or secret files ever emerged. It did, however,
Speaker 1: succeed in keeping the McAfee name alive a little longer
Speaker 1: even after his death, lingering there like that little shield
Speaker 1: in the bottom corner of the computer screen. This season
Speaker 1: of Foundering was hosted by me Jamie Tarabay Sean When
Speaker 1: Is Our executive producer. Matthew Bramner contributed reporting to this episode.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Young Young Gilda Di Carli and Catherine
Speaker 1: Fink for help with production, and to Jakie Dablos, Nick Turner,
Speaker 1: and Lucy Papa Christu. Molly Nugent is our associate producer.
Speaker 1: Sure if Usurf is our audio engineer and editorial assistant.
Speaker 1: Mark Million oversaw production of this episode and edited the
Speaker 1: story along with Andy Martin, Anne Vandermay, and Molly Shitz.
Speaker 1: This is the end of the John McAfee story. If
Speaker 1: you liked our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell
Speaker 1: your friends and keep us in your feed. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with more Foundering See you next time.