John McAfee, Silicon Valley Software Mogul, Dies At 75

SILICON VALLEY, CA — John McAfee, the founder of the Silicon Valley-based McAfee software company, died in a prison in Spain on Wednesday, according to the New York Times and other media reports. He was 75.

According to the Spanish newspaper El País, "the evidence points to a suicide." The Calatan regional police are investigating the incident.

McAfee’s death comes the same day that Spain’s National Court approved his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges. McAfee, who was accused of not filing tax returns from 2014 to 2018, was arrested in October in Spain, but he refused extradition to the United States because he said he faced political persecution there, according to The Times.

The charges carried a sentence of up to 30 years in prison if McAfee was convicted.

McAfee started McAfee Associates out of his Santa Clara home in 1987. The company’s antivirus software was one of the first tools to block computer viruses and, within five years of launching, half of all Fortune 100 companies were using the software, according to the Washington Post.

McAfee sold the company for $100 million in 1994, according to the Post. His later years were erratic. McAfee spent time in several foreign countries, was arrested multiple times and was the chief suspect of a murder investigation of his neighbor in Belize in 2012. He fled Belize after he claimed to have faked a heart attack and was deported back to the United States. McAfee was never formally charged with the murder and said he fled because he feared for his life.

McAfee also lived in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Canada, and ran for president in the United States in 2016 as a Libertarian.