Tech mogul McAfee is held on suspicion of tax evasion

Cybersecurity pioneer is accused of failing to file 2014 to ’ 18 returns.

Elusive cybersecurity pioneer John McAfee was arrested in Spain on suspicion of tax evasion in the U. S., the Justice Department in Washington said.

McAfee is accused of failing to f ile U. S. tax returns from 2014 to 2018 and hiding assets including real estate, a vehicle and a yacht in the name of others, prosecutors said. An indictment returned in June was unsealed Monday after he was taken into custody. He’s being held pending extradition, the Justice Department said.

Prosecutors say McAfee earned millions of dollars through the promotion of cryptocurrencies, speaking engagements, consulting jobs and the sale of the rights to his life story for a documentary, but never f iled tax returns. Instead, his income was paid into accounts held in the names of others, prosecutors claim. He faces as long as five years in prison if convicted of tax evasion and a year if found guilty of failing to file taxes.

It’s the latest legal complication for the eccentric software mogul, who was a person of interest in a murder in Belize, though not charged with a crime; last year he was detained in the Dominican Republic for entering the country with a cache of f irearms and ammunition. He was also brief ly a candidate in this year’s U. S. presidential election, ending his run from abroad in March.

The criminal charges were announced just hours after the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued McAfee for promoting the sale of cryptocurrencies without disclosing that he was being paid to do so.

The commission says McAfee recommended at least seven initial coin offerings to his Twitter followers from at least November 2017 to February 2018 without revealing that he earned more than $ 23 million to boost them. He’s also accused of denying that he was being paid when asked by investors.

The SEC is seeking unspecified monetary penalties, to force McAfee to disgorge all his ill- gotten gains and to prohibit him from taking part in the issuance, purchase or sale of any digital asset securities.

McAfee didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The commission also accused McAfee of claiming to be an investor or technical advisor, “creating the impression that he had vetted these companies, that they were benefiting from his technical expertise, and that he was willing to invest in the ventures.”

When a blogger exposed that he was being paid, McAfee was still holding “virtually worthless” securities from the offerings he promoted and encouraged investors to buy them — without revealing that they were his own securities and he had paid a third party to recommend them, according to the complaint.

McAfee also engaged in scalping, in which he accumulated large amounts of digital securities and promoted them on Twitter without disclosing his intention to sell, the SEC said.

McAfee founded his eponymous software company in 1987. Intel Corp., seeking to build security features directly into its chips, bought the company for $ 7.7 billion in 2010.