The software entrepreneur who went rogue
John McAfee 1945–2021
John McAfee made his fortune as the creator of antivirus software, but his tech savvy was soon overshadowed by his bizarre escapades as a globe-trotting hedonist. The computer engineer started McAfee Associates in his Northern California home in 1987 and was soon earning $5 million a year from his ubiquitous program. After cashing out for an estimated $100 million in 1994, the self-declared sex, drugs, and firearms enthusiast embarked on a series of fantastical exploits that led to criminal charges across the U.S., Europe, and Central America. In 2012, he fled Belize after being sought for questioning in the shooting death of a neighbor whom McAfee had accused of poisoning his guard dogs. The 75-year-old McAfee was found dead of apparent suicide in a Spanish jail last week, hours after a court had approved his extradition to the U.S. to face tax evasion and security fraud charges. “I’m a madman to some people because I don’t follow the normal rules,” he once said. “The drummer that leads me is an odd drummer, but I follow the sound.”
McAfee grew up in Roanoke, Va., where his father, a road surveyor and an abusive alcoholic, “took his own life when John was 15,” said
The Guardian (U.K.). After studying mathematics at Roanoke College, McAfee took a series of programming jobs, including at NASA and Xerox, and developed “a growing dependency on alcohol and drugs.” He “landed in Silicon Valley,” where he joined Alcoholics Anonymous after suffering a hallucinogen-fueled breakdown at work. He was at Lockheed when he read about a new Pakistani computer virus “and created a program to neutralize it.” After selling McAfee Associates, he embarked on other ventures, including a Colorado yoga retreat and a New Mexico “aerotrekking” business—which involved flying very small aircraft close to the ground at high speeds. He moved to Belize after losing most of his fortune during the 2008 financial crisis, said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). News accounts depicted McAfee “as a latter-day Kurtz leading a Heart of Darkness–style existence,” with a jungle encampment, a private security force, and a harem of teenage girlfriends. Returning to the U.S. in
2013, he married a prostitute, tried to run for president on the Libertarian ticket, and “reinvented himself” as a promoter of cybercurrency, said The Washington Post. “Boy, I do live an exciting life,” he said. “It’s too exciting, sometimes. But that happens if you live on the edge.... Sometimes, I fall off.”