Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 359: John McAfee: Father of Many, Loved by Few

Episode Date: July 26, 2026

This week, Alex takes the boys on a journey through the weird life and vibes of John McAfee of global anti-virus fame. A story of the early internet, relentless hackers, a life of problems and a man on the run.CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same!Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPODThank you to our sponsors:Bioptimizers: http://bioptimizers.com/chill use code CHILLHero Forge: https://www.heroforge.comMike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBragginEpisode Sources:https://archive.is/aLPzLhttps://archive.is/wuLm1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfeehttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-hacked-john-mcafee-got-away-his-true-life-story-steve-morgan/https://medium.com/@robloggia/showtime-send-the-money-to-this-address-efb035f799f0https://cybersecurityventures.com/mcafee-unplugged/https://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/06/john-mcafee-on-arrest-i-was-impaired.htmlhttps://x.com/officialmcafee/status/1200864283766251521https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermin_Supreme

Hello, everybody and welcome back to the Chuluminati podcast, episode 3.59, I believe, as always, I'm one of your host, Mike Martin, join with my two wonderful co-host, Jesse and Alex. On a hot day for fucking all of us across the country, dude. It is sweltering hot everywhere where we all live. Did you say you believe your Mike, Mike, Mike? Did you see you believe you're Mike Martin? Believe episode 359. Oh, I believe I'm Mike Martin. As I thought you, I'm in like a small identity crisis.

I was like, whoa. Who am I at any given day? What mask do I wear? you know oh my god am i i am who i am who am i do this is a riddle answer it and i've got one legal nug for you oh my god the bean boy and is the bean boy shrine yes and alex one always tells the truth and one always lies if you find the bean boy shrine and no one's home and you beat him to his bed he'll grant you one wish if you can answer his riddle if we got any practitioners of magic out there i would ask of you

to create a small bean boy shrine. I would love that if you could put that energy out there into the magical world. Charge it. Charge it. A can of baked beans can represent him rather well. I'm just saying. Let's just get everybody legally purchasing some weed and smoking it.

Yeah, yeah. If they'd like to. Exactly. Anytime you smoke weed and make sure you think of bean boy and the bean boy will bring pleasant highs and enjoyable high times. Smoke weed by choice, only legal lugs. that's the Boston Beanboy way. It's some magical practices out there.

No, Jesse, you don't want any of that? It's just the, I don't know that I want to be involved with any Beanboy shrine should you get arrested by the police and they see a shrine of Beanboy and they're like A to B to C back to us. It's part of the design. It's legal. By definition, we're not going to get in trouble because that's why the Beanboy looks out for us. That's part of his grace.

If you live in a state where weed isn't legal, it's okay. just a can of baked beans works. I don't know that I want you to have a can of baked beans just sitting out. I've had a lot of baked beans this summer. And they'll do you wrong if you leave them out. Listen, guys, if you don't want to hear anything about any of that, head over to patreon.com slash shlumni pod, where we do all kinds of stuff of value

and with actual entertainment value to it, unlike the last three minutes of this show. You can go over there, listen to a minisode, and it's going to be another little bonus moment from today, like right after we finish recording this, of us going through sort of current events. Usually I do something these days like read a listener story, something like that, which you can leave on our subreddit.

Worth Trach of UFO files last week. Yep. We had some really crazy stuff. Like, we discovered that the quality of the images, if you download them, is like suspiciously better than they are on the website where they seem to be stylized to be lower quality. Yeah, it's in color removed. Yeah, really strange.

But if you want the minisodes, go on over to our Patreon. And there's one every time we upload a normal episode. And it helps us keep the show going. And it's our primary way making money. So please give me my dinner. Please. Thank you guys. Please.

Patreon.com slash 290pod. Please, sir. I want some more dinner. What else? How many tickets left to the show? Last I checked, we had four tickets left. I'm literally checking right. We're out.

We're sold out. We're sold out. Okay, well, sold out. Ticket for the live show. Sorry, y'all. This is an announcement that we're going to have a really good time in Chicago, and thank you for watching. I can't wait to see everyone. Thank you for your purchase. Thank you for your purchase. I, thank you for your purchase. I, game.

Last time of Chicago was my first time I fell in love with that city. It's beautiful. Wonderful city. What was the, what's the, what's the cities? It's, what's the moment? What was the, what did you fall in love with, Mathis? I don't know, me and my brother or sister just walking the streets together was just nice. It was just a nice.

I think it was like a city that's not. not as priced like a city. I mean, well, try and live there, though. It's, it's still a city.

But with that said, it is, it's a big city, but Midwest, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Like, it is a big city,

but the vibe is like, like, come on, y'all, let's go get some breakfast. We need to get, we need to get an architecture boat tour on the schedule

next time. That'd be great. Anyway, go there if you already bought a ticket. If not, I mean, unless you're an eccentric

millionaire do not fly to Chicago because there's a very small chance that you'll meet us if you don't go into the show but there you go. In a massive city of millions of people there is a small chance, yes. Yes. Also, if you like merch if you like merge from this darn

show and you like to support us and you don't want to support us on Patreon or something like that, you'd rather get cold hard goods, dry goods in your hands rather than some weird subscription. Cal fee. Yeah. Yeah, get some cast iron fork and knives for outdoors. No, head on over there to the Yeti.com slash shulmini.

Time out. Shit. Why are we not doing this? We need to sell a Chulamati outdoors camping baked bean cooking set. How are we not doing this? I feel like the first piece of bean boy merch. I mean, there's a lot of stuff probably that we're. There's a lot of times.

We can pitch it as you're watching the stars. You're looking for, or maybe you're looking for Bigfoot and a little camping set. And in that is one of those little tin things where you bake, baked beans. Come on. Why are we not doing this? I see it.

I see the dream. There's a lot of points where you can jump off where you have a chance to think twice. And I think that's probably what we haven't done it. I got no, I'm not thinking twice. But you know what? I'll tell you what. If there's an overwhelming, like, like, like swell of demand. on the subreddit. I will, I will change our plans. If, if, if hundreds of people come out of the

woodwork saying, this bean set is what we need, I will add it to our, I will add it to our merchandise schedule. With the, um, listen, we haven't sold out of our posters yet. So like, do we're close. We're close though. And one is camping gear with a Tuluminati logo on it. And then a Boston baked bean boy can or you bake your beans. Listen. People would use that just to use it. If you want to buy some real merch that actually exists, you can go over there and buy some top secret stickers from Muddly. They are fucking amazing.

Mel also turned her giant, awesome pink and green mantis on the rocket ship with multiple arms with a ray gun. Like, kind of like trashy, sexy mantis on a rocket ship shirt. It's sick. It's pretty sick. I wear it all the time. Going over there to patreon.com. What? Nope.

The Yeti.com slash Chulminati. links in the description. It's quite confusing because it's the only one that is spelled completely differently than all the other ones. But go check it out. Go buy some stuff there. Keep us going. And so we can do the show. Just like this one, guys, this is John McAfee, father of many loved by few, which is actually a quote from his obituary. The difficulty with John McAfee is that he's like an unreliable narrator in his own story, right? Like he has a past. he has a pass where he's heavily done drugs McAfee that the documentary exists

yes this is John Macfee is in Maccophie virus scan yeah yeah yeah he's heavily done drugs though he claims to have been sober since the 80s but that's enough time to have your brain addled by them hard drugs and he's definitely what on some people on what on some level some people will call crazy he's paranoid as fuck right he gets all these crazy schemes in his head

he has all these like persecution complexes where He thinks people are after him all the time. But then on the other hand, it's confusing because he, like, it seems like he actually is some kind of genius, right? Like, he has actually done all these, like, crazy computer things that he's done. He's the McAfee from McAfee Viruscan, by the way. We'll talk about that more in a second, but he is that. What's that quote? There's a fine line between genius and insanity.

Yes, yes. He is like the guy who did all the, like, world-changing development stuff he did. and he still kind of seems like he was at least plugged into that world, even near the end of his life, if not, like, still like a legit master of the form still. He was at least like a legend.

Though, for all I know, he may well have been a master. I have no idea. He really is quite a mystery. But for all intents and purposes, pretty much the only stuff we can even come close to trusting is the things he did while other people were watching him.

Like, everything that we have is like an interview with him that's in a crazy circumstance or something that he just said in an, an interview rather than anything that we can know for sure is true because it's also mysterious. And he just leaves this impression behind that sort of like Oz people, even though they hate him, kind of. For that reason, while these are definitely not time slices, I'm going to just take you through the events of John McAfee's life as factually as possible in just normal chronological order

and fill out some of the questions you might have about how or why with like some primary sources or some small quotes or whatever or some cursory knowledge that I picked up from watching a million documentaries and reading a bunch of articles about this guy, which in the case of John McAfee himself, I think it's safe to take with at least one grain of some seriously high

quality salt. But anyway, yeah, this is the life of John McAfee. Yeah, like a nice pink salt, like a rock salt. Do you ever do that? You ever cook shrimp on a rock salt block? You ever just get it so high holds heat so well. You can just heat the salt block up and just put the shrimp on there. it sounds delicious yeah it's pretty good

it's become like extra salty shrimp I don't know yeah you like see you don't have to season it yeah it just it seasons itself while you cook it and it gets like a crust on anyway this is the life of John McAfee he definitely had a fucked up life of his own that he didn't create for himself or cause but after reading quite a few articles

about the man I must say it doesn't really seem like he ever moved past all that or really ever turned any of it into like a true positive force in the world he just kind of fell victim to his own sort of worst impulses. The man's story is strange.

It's sad. But the reason I'm telling it on this show is because along with it come like two sort of mysteries within it. Like that's why it's on Choluminadi the show, which in the summer of secrets, which it is right now. And this, like I said, this is all about paranoia, secrets, mysteries, unsolved things, things that nag at you, things, people that maybe will be chasing you, maybe not secret codes. Pepe Sylvia. Who is Pepe Sylvia? That is the theme of this summer. And so in this story there.

two kind of weird mysteries, which, and even more than that, even more than two, but two real big ones that people ask about John McAfee, which various people think about, various things about. So consider this larger story context and background for eventually deciding at the end what John McAfee did, what happened to him. And there'll be a few more little strangenesses along the way that let not just you, the audience, but me, the researcher, know that not everything with the guy was quite how it seemed, probably, probably. These are absolutely not time slices, so I won't mention those anymore. But we're starting at the beginning. Also, heads up, please. This one has violence in it, both sexual violence, non-consensual kind,

and non-sexual violence. And it's against both humans and animals, I think. So prepare yourself. If that's not your scene, maybe skip this episode, though. If you follow my meaning, it's more in this one like there's a few bad moments than that's the entire flavor of the entire bit of what we're talking about today. So if you feel like maybe you can deal with it for a second and you can give it a shot, proceed with caution, get ready to drown me out with some Astrid Gilberto

or something nice like that. If you need it, just turn it on the AirPods, get it queued up if you need it. Thank you so much to buy optimizers for sponsoring today's episode. Look, I live on the Gulf Coast, so it's genuinely melting outside right now. The heat has been insane. and the nights are just not that much better.

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Bioptimers best-selling digestive enzyme added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. That's a $20 product for free. You heard me right. A top of you discount. This is a limit time offer and while supplies last. You cannot get this on Amazon right now. You can't even get them in stores. This offer exists in one place with my link, my code. That's it. Thank you again to Buy Optimizers for sponsoring today's episode. John McAfee was born September 18th, 1945 in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England. I'm hoping I pronounced that properly. He was on a military base there, which according to Wikipedia was the 596 ordinance ammunition company.

And I love this. This is one of my favorite things that happens in the past. His dad's name is his dad is American. his name was Don McAfee. So John McAfee's dad is Don McAfee. And then his mother was British and she was Joan Williams. So Joan McAfee, Don McAfee, John McAfee. Is that something?

John John. Did I just create the first hack? I think you basically made them into Pokemon that like, you know those generators they combine two Pokemon into something? Yes. Yeah. Don and Joan made John. It looks mysteriously like actually like John McAfee, who basically looks like if Guy Fieri was Iggy Pop, does that like help? That is, that's pretty close. Yes. Like, look at a picture of him after I say that and that's pretty close.

Anyway, his dad is from Roanoke, Virginia, which is mysterious in its own way. And he, but he was raised in Salem, Virginia. And he felt his British identity as much as his American identity according to him. And sort of the key moment of his younger life is that when he was 15 years old, his like father, Don, who was like abusive father, scary guy took out his anger on his family. Alcoholic drank his ass to death almost. Apparently his dad shot himself when he was 15. And so this was like a big kind of scar in his brain and something that he returned to it. Surprisingly odd times, as we'll see. but he has spent his childhood kind of like just afraid and so that's like where his like sort of habits

maybe come from you know what I mean like I don't know like maybe like just the idea of growing up with like somebody maybe about to beat the shit of you at any moment is bad but yeah it was 1960 when he was 15 and his dad took his life so we're just still in the very early part of the mid century which is kind of interesting um John gets his bachelor's in mathematics from Roanoke College in Virginia, 1967, just a couple of years later. And he started a doctorate in mathematics at Northeast Louisiana State,

but he was expelled from Northeast Louisiana State pretty quickly. And it's kind of for an interesting reason because it sounds kind of gross. And actually, like, I don't get too far into it because I keep feeling like I do these stories about these, like, letcherous dudes. And then that's what my episodes are about all the time. That's just the Alex brand.

I think that's just dudes, actually. Actually, dudes with power. But, like, in this case, this, it was actually more different. Like, he got expelled for dating an undergrad. And this woman's called Fran. And this was in 1968. But then they got married. So I don't know what was really going on there.

Like, maybe something like truly romantic was occurring or not. I don't know. But while he was working on his- Romantic, just like, I don't know. I had a high school, in my high school English teacher, ended up marrying one of his students after they grew after after they graduated. We all have a story like this. I know it. I know Jesse has one.

I think I've heard. Yeah, yeah. Two. Oh my God. I have a couple. Yeah. I don't know. It's weird.

It's weird thing. But apparently that's part of the president of the national tapestry, I guess. Yeah. But he did marry her. So maybe there was something. That's all I'm saying. It was just interesting because he married her immediately. And so maybe he did it out of love.

But probably not. Yeah, he worked as a programmer at NASA from 1968 to 1970. Then he moved over to UNIVAC. Then he moved over to Xerox, which is where he actually, like, participate in writing the actual, like, operating system of Xerox, like, of the machines. Pretty crazy. And then he joined Computer Sciences Corporation as a software consultant in 1978 for a while because he was very sort of, like, excellent in his field.

And then he moved to this consulting firm to do some consulting and Booz Allen Hamilton, which is a hilarious name for a consulting firm that the first name is booze. And now we're in 1980. And he stayed there for about two years. Just doing some consulting until finally he ended up in Sunnyvale, California, working at Lockheed. And all those secrets. Yeah. And there's a quote here for him one year later in 1983 for what it was like at that time for him in 1983.

Which one of you guys wants to read that? I can do it. I got it. No problem. I got it. He was a pivotal year for McAfee. He was 38 and director of engineering at Omex, a company that built information storage systems in Santa Clara, California. He was also selling cocaine to his subordinates and snorting massive amounts himself.

When he got too high to focus, he'd take a quailude. Right, of course, as one does. If he started to fall asleep at his desk, he'd snort some more Coke to wake up. McAfee had trouble making it through the day and spent his afternoon's drinking scotch to even out the tumult in his head. I feel sick. Just thinking about like living through that up and down drug-induced. Holy Jesus Christ. He'd been a mess for a long time.

He grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, where his father was a road surveyor and his mother bank teller. His father, McAfee, recalls, was a heavy drinker and a very unhappy man who McAfee says beat him and his mother severely. When McAfee was 15, his father shot himself. Every day I wake up with him, McAfee says, every relationship I have, he's by my side, every mistrust,

he is the negotiator of that mistrust. So my life is fucked. McAfee started drinking heavily his first year at Rowanoke College and supported himself by selling magazine subscriptions door to door. When he says supported himself, do you think they just mean his drug habit?

Is that with her? He made so much fucking money, though. Like, it was more than enough. Let's put it that way. He would not get announced that the lucky resident had won an absolutely free subscription. All they had to do was pay a small shipping and handling fee. So in fact, I'm explaining to them why it's not free and why they're going to pay for it. But the ruse worked. Yeah, big time. But then something completely unpredictable happened in 1986 when the first ever like computer virus as we know it, which was called Brain, was released by two brothers in a computer shop in Pakistan,

who just wanted to see how far around the world it would go. And here's a quote about it from his obituary in the Times for Mathis to read. McCaffey was a computer programmer at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California, with a troubled background, though he had been sober for four years. He read about Brain in the Mercury News and found it terrifying because it reminded him of his childhood when his alcoholic father would beat him and his mother for no reason. I didn't know why he did it, he told Wired magazine. I just knew a beating could happen at any time.

Man, what? Like, an unfortunate thing to read about this computer virus, and it's immediately you're so traumatized that it just, like, reminds you of your childhood. That is like, yeah, yeah, exactly. But A to B to C there is wild. It's like, that's what I'm saying. It pops up all the time, yeah.

That like, so deep. Something like a virus reminds me of your, like, that's, it makes me feel like he just didn't know how to take care of himself, that he didn't know. like that he shouldn't be selling cocaine like magazine subscriptions like he shouldn't be like just taking like every chemical possible to like augment his day

he just kind of was doing it out of like kind of crazed survival instinct and paranoia. You know like talk to him. I could have mitigated some of this. I just think one more quailude could have helped. Oh, you know what?

That would have evened them out for sure. He would have never tried ecstasy in this process. So like, you know. It's true. LSD? Maybe that would have helped.

LSD? Or if you, Like, you think he would have made like something else, like a little like kicker. You know what I mean? That could have helped them. Yeah, just start. Oh, I can't know. The poor.

All right. Yeah. Someone out there's going to be like, you hear what these guys said. Do you think he would have made a piece computer if he did LSD instead? Maybe. That's how that works. He would have solved it. He would have a world peace computer one with nature.

He would have made the co. The cojima server. The Cogima master brain. It's possible. Yeah. I bet you he did do LSD and it just didn't do anything to him. His brain was already too fried. Right. In 1987, while still at Lockheed, he started McAfee Associates from his home in Santa Clara,

creating antivirus software that could detect malicious software and remove it automatically. He was not expecting users to pay for the basic model. He simply wanted to impress on them the need to be protected from computer viruses. Within five years, half of America's Fortune 100 companies had installed McCaffey's software and were paying a licensing fee for the full protection it purported to offer. By 1990, he was making $5 million a year. As a sideline, he ran the American Institute for Safe Sex Practices. Any member who paid him a fee and tested HIV negative could have sex with other members for six months free from the risk of AIDS. What do you mean?

He's hustling, dude. He ran a sex club? He ran a sex club. He ran a sex registry. A sex, a sex, guilt-free sex registry. grabbed onto the balls of capitalism. Wait, I don't understand. Hold on. Repeat.

What did he do? He created a safe sex club. No, no, no, but I mean, like, what did you said,

as long as they tested, HIV negative and paid him, he would, he would like, approve them. What would happen? He could have sex with other members. It was like a registry.

Yeah, it was like a registry of members. But like, I guess I'm curious when it says you can have sex with other members. Is it like, yeah, man, just pick someone and you can.

Or is it like, the potential opportunity is there, but it doesn't guarantee you will have sex with them. I think it's the, I hope it's the potential opportunity. Like, I want to be with member C, you know. It definitely sounds, it definitely sounds suss. It says also like, it says member from sleeping with somebody else while there is, you know, the flaw in this is kind of obvious. The sense it was short-lived. It was run by John McAfee.

And that they, okay, according to the Washington Post article, they had a card that you could get. And then you could like, that was like your ID card so that like if you want to have sex with somebody, you could be like, are you insured by survival? And like pull out your card. What? Then people didn't really believe the card because you could just pull the card out and be like, I'm clean, baby. And then like, you can get the card and then also just. just go sleep with people who don't have the car and there's no way to check. Yeah.

And so it's just, it doesn't really make sense, but I thought it was funny to include. If you have no morals, you can just make money off of anybody for anything. I guess, dude. I think that's kind of how we kind of approach the whole situation, to be honest. But anyway, I don't know at what point he divorced Fran or even what Fran's last name is, possibly by Fran's own choice. I don't know. But that same year and that he invented the virus scan and he met and,

married his second wife, though no one's really sure what happened to his first wife, like I said. But she was a former, the new one is a former American Airlines flight attendant. I think this was in 1990. And her name was Judy Shambliss. And he married her when he was like a millionaire. McAfee incorporated in 1992 in Delaware and went public like all big companies do. And McAfee himself was constantly on TV warning people of all the different various viruses with scary names

out there that we're going to come get you and destroy you like Michelangelo and Vienna and stoned the stoned virus used to come home and beat the fuck out of you seriously ping pong that's another one scary virus that's the noise my dad's handmaid when he slapped me in the ass that's like where his vibe was at uh no it's like imagine him on tv just warning people and then just constantly referring to the fact that his dad beat him yes uh and he was saying like oh like any business it's essential that you have my software if you're a smart business owner because he's are out there and he was like infecting these people with this sort of paranoid way of thinking which feels very american to me now uh but eventually he sort of ran on it got tired of the hustle

stepped down as a CEO of the company in 1993 became the cTO for a while until he eventually resigned fully in 1994 and he sold his stake in the company when it was like valued extremely highly and he got like rich as fuck and then he sort of pieced out and he sort of took on this air of like being anti the company that had his name and calling it bloatware because the reason he kind of left was he was kind of feeling that public pressure like now that the company's public to sort of like do those sorts of things with the software and everybody was kind of pushing him to do that and he just didn't agree with it according to him which will make sense later when you find out how libertarian this dude is but he like went and he like he called it bloatware

and he kind of left and it seems very altruistic to me right now uh at this point. point. You know what I mean? Other than that he's like a weird like drug man who's like now clean, but he's like a weird hustler. I don't know. I don't know. He's a weird guy. He weirds me out. Founded tribal voice in 1994. Wasn't a good dude. No, not really. I cannot, I cannot stress this. Take the time to go watch that documentary about him. So good. It's so good. It's one of the craziest things I've ever watched. It's, it's, and it's like not even, like, that's like just a small portion of this story that's featured in that documentary too, which is interesting. In 1994, he found a company called Tribal Voice, which made Powwow.

I don't know if you remember Powwow. That's like one of the earliest IAM clients that there was out there. He joined the board of directors for a firewall company called Zone Labs in 2000, which is the most 2000 like bubble pop company name I've ever heard of, Zone Labs. It was, which was acquired by Checkpoint Software in 2003. He also bought and opened a property in Colorado in 2000, because now he was like rich and delusional, which he operated as a meditation retreat and as like a yoga place. And in 2001, he wrote and released four books on meditation and yoga.

And then in 2002, he divorced Judy Chambliss, his flight attendant wife. He divorced her. And just went and became like a Yoda master. Yoga master. Yoga master. Mispoke there. Yoda master. Thank you so much to HeroForge for sponsoring today's episode.

You've already heard me talk about HeroForge for over. over a year now. Listen, if you're a nerd like I am, play tabletop RPGs just like to collect minis, then you probably have heard of HeroForge, if I'm honest. And if you have heard of them, then you know how impactful their minis creation tool is. If you want to, like, create your own character for whatever RPG you're playing or whatever minis game you're playing, you get over to Heroforge.com right now and literally just go use their tool for free because you can. You can just go see how powerful it is and how many hundreds of options you have to create your own characters. I've said it a million times before, but I run D&D games here at my house

and I have a 3D printer at home, so I'm constantly designing minis, buying the STL file and printing my minis at home. It's one of the best ways for me to do it. I have so many freaking minis thanks to HeroForge, and even before we were working with them, I was using them. If you want plastic, colored plastic, bronze, and all kinds of other options from fantasy and all, just a bunch of stuff, just go over to Hero Forge and use code, chill pod on checkout to save yourself a little something in supporting our show. It goes a long way. Again, thank you to Hero Ford for sponsoring this episode and work with us for so long. We love you guys. Go check him out. In the mid-2000s, he started this sort of like light sport airplane firm that does like

arrow trekking, which is like those little, I don't know if you know what I'm talking, but you know what I mean? They're like kind of like a hang glider, but they're like a full vehicle that you can see inside. And it's crazy. In, in that business, um, venture. His nephew, who was like 21 years old or something, was an arrow trekking instructor. His name was Joel Gordon Biddo. And his student and his nephew died in a crash, in an aerot trekking crash in 2006. And it was really weird. And like the way it was all handled was kind of strange. And the family of the student named him as a defendant in a civil court case in 2008 over that. And then in 2008, also he lost a bunch of money in the 2008 financial crisis.

And in 2009, it was reported that his worth had shrunk from where it was when he sold all his shares to add $100 million down to like $4 million. So he spent a lot of it also, but he experienced like a giant loss of resources. And also in 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from his alma mater, Roanoke College, which is like, crazy that all this stuff happened and then he got that. And then like after like the same year that he's embroiled in like a lawsuit over a dead guy, he like gets an honorary doctorate of science because I guess he still kind of is this sort of cybersecurity guru also. And so there's this reputation. He gets interviewed all the time and like talks about it and kind of creates this like Hunter S. Thompson on the edge-esque character all the time. Just interesting. He ended up moving to

Belize in 2009, where he purchased a beachfront compound on Ambergris Key. And another one near Carmelita on the mainland. And he became known locally for keeping a security detail of ex-criminales and thugs, like people who had specifically killed people to go to jail. He hired them to be his guards. And he had this plan to start this kind of weird company, growing these like sort of specific, sort of like new age, not new age, but like sort of cutting age science, medicinal plant research-based products was where he was at with it, because Belize is kind of jungley. And so he had some sort of idea with that.

And on the 2009 CNBC special, The Bubble Decade, he revealed that he lost most of his money in that crisis building unsold mansions during the housing crisis, which eventually ballooned into a global recession, right? So, like, obviously... I think I really had to live through one of those. Yeah, obviously he's just, he commits hard. He commits hard to what he's doing, sort of like ideas that are sort of generated from within. He built a bunch of mansions and lost money.

That's a huge thing to commit to when you're only worth $100 million. But he did it. And he fucked himself up in the recession. And in early 2010, when he finally started to get this company going for real, he partnered with the biologist, Allison and Donizio to start the herbal antibiotic company, quorum X, which specifically targets bacteria's quorum sensing ability, which I think is like how strong it needs to be. I don't know enough about bacteria. I'm not a bacteriologist, but I believe what it does is it sort of like blinds the bacteria from being able to do something that it normally does to infect you properly and makes it hard for the bacteria to infect you. So that was

the idea with the company. In 2012, the mensa bulletin as in like, the geniuses like Mensa. They published an interview with Macfee where he claimed that he was one of the most popular hacking targets in the world, which kind of makes sense, right? I can see that for sure. He's like the antivirus guy, right? So it's kind of cool to hack Mr. Antivirus. Yeah, like kind of for the bit.

And it became such an inconvenience for him that he had to have other people buy all his gear for him and he had to change his IP address multiple times a day so that they couldn't track his machines and stuff like that, which he said was just really annoying, but kind of cool, but kind of lame. but suddenly on April 30th, 2012, John McAfee was arrested for making drugs without a license and for owning a bunch of weapons in his house

without proper registration. His compound in Orange, Wachtown, Belize, was raided by the Belize PD gang suppression unit, which is the GSU, which is like, in his story, like a scary organization

that like consistently terrorizes you and does like, kind of like, KGB style, like intimidation tactics against you, But the police themselves maintained that this was all just because he was a suspect and not convicted or charged with anything. And actually he was eventually released without charges being filed. And so it's this weird thing because it also kind of feels like he says the police were getting weird about the fact that he was like building a private army kind of.

Right. He kind of had all these guys walking around all the time with guns and shit. And they're like, dude, give me those guns. So maybe they kind of like trumped up the charges a little bit to like get in there and take his guns. It's not, I don't know. That's kind of what he says, but I don't know how often he lies or tells the truth. That's the thing that I took away the most from the documentary is that I don't know if he lies or tells the truth about like everything he says seems so insane. It can't possibly be real.

But then again, like some stuff is definitely real. Yeah. Then you discover like, wait a minute, that was like, I don't know. The man's an enigma. But I also think because his whole life was like, all. always trying to stay one step ahead, that that's how he's like, well, if I lie and I'm gone, like, what are you going to do? Nothing. So like, yeah. Yeah. And it was, it did end up being, it did end up being weird. It did end up being weird because a few years later when he's

hiding out in Canada, he's being interviewed. He said that during that raid, a bunch of his assets were seized. And then the house mysteriously burned down where they were all seized from to cover evidence or something. I don't know. Or just to intimidate him, which is already weird. But then later that year, he also says that from 2010 to 2011, he actually did. And make like 200 posts on Blue Light, if you know what Blue Light is, Mathis. What the fuck is Blue Light? It's like a forum about like, if you're

going to use fucked up drugs, like, at least be safe. Oh, that sounds like a great website. Yeah, it's like, it's like that type of community, but he made like 200 posts on there under the name Stuffmonger. Why do you say, I don't know if you know what that is Mathis? Because I thought maybe you would.

I thought maybe you'd be like, that's where I get all my drugs. It's not like, I don't know, any psychedelics or anything too. Like maybe you found a method there. I don't know. But it's like a drug use forum for proper drug use. Let's just put it that way. He's on there under the name Stuffmonger,

which I think Jesse and Mathis both have used at various times for various things. All about how to use and make MDPV, aka bath salts, aka plant fertilizer, aka ivory wave, aka vanilla sky, aka Energy One,

aka monkey dust. So maybe everybody's right, you know, because he definitely, was posting he was posting stuff about how to make drugs and he had all these plants that he was doing but he had this health plant company but he was also growing plants and he had like guns you know what I'm saying like dude is fucking yeah entertaining as hell and he's fucking insane yeah I mean like he's scared like he is it's one of those things where when you like uh read about him you're like whoa this guy would be crazy to hang out with and then again would have loved like go watch that documentary

I don't know what you would expect, but it's not fun and crazy. It's like scary crazy. Oh, you still have a story after though. I don't know, dude. I think everyone involved with that shoot thought they were going to die. Well, what's the who read the last one? I think Mathis did. Okay, well, you read this one and it's like exactly that.

It's a quote from Wired about what it's like to be with John McAfee. The shades are drawn so I can see only a sliver of the white beach sand and turquoise water outside. The table is piled with boxes of ammunition, fake IDs bearing his photo, Frontiersman bear deterrent, and a single blue baby pacifier. McAfee picks a bullet off the floor and fixes me with a wide-eye manic intensity. This is a bullet, right? He says in the congenial southern accent, sorry, this is a bullet, right? He said, he said, has sunk with him since the boy in Virginia. Let's put it back in the gun. I tell him, I come here to try and understand why the government of Belize was accusing him of assembling a private army and entering the drug trade. It seemed implausible

that a wildly successful tech entrepreneur would disappear into the Central American jungle and become a narco-trafficker. Now, I'm not so sure. I can see somebody with his mentality. I questioned it. Right, but like, you know what I mean? Like that paranoid somebody's coming after me mentality, maybe just having a compound in a sort of relatively in his mind, lawless country is like the safe play where you're protected literally by dudes with guns rather than like society. He did have plants and was on a drug website. But he also lied a ton.

And a lot of it seems like maybe he was just running from the U.S. government who was after him. And so he fled. And like there's so many layers to this insanity that I cannot stress to you what you think you know about this man. You don't know. I don't know. I don't know that anyone knows.

And I think that's, it's a weird parallel to draw. And it's not, you know, one to one. But he reminds me of people like Alistair Crowley, uh, sure, like Madame Bovotsky, which we'll talk about because it's the same with their history. You don't, they, they lie so much about who they are, where they came from, the secret masters as well, we'll one day cover Madame Bovotsky. All that shit is like, it's so much lies. But then all of a sudden, you come across something, you're like, well, wait a man,

that was true. and then the whole, you're like, you're not sure where the legend and the true. Are these guys fronting? Are they just legit? But that's part of it. It's a myth building exercise. I don't think this guy was doing it on purpose in a way like some magicians ought to do, but it's very similar because it does build this.

Like, it still persists to this day of like, who was this guy? I actually do kind of think that's a much better analogy maybe than you think. Like here's the rest of here from Mathis, why don't you read the other half of this quote right here? Sorry, scroll for a second, okay, here. But he explains that the accusations are fabrication. Maybe what happened didn't actually happen, he says, staring hard at me. Can I do a demonstration? He loads a bullet into the gleaming silver revolver and spins the cylinder.

This scares you, right? He says, then he puts the gun to his head. My heart rate kicks up. He takes a second to respond. It takes me a second to respond, rather. Yeah, I'm scared, I admit. We don't have to do this. I know we don't, he says, the muzzle pressed against his temple, and then he pulls the trigger.

Nothing happens. He pulls it three more times in rapid succession. There are only five chambers. Rehulster the gun, I demand. He keeps his eyes fixed on me and pulls the trigger a fifth time. Still nothing. With the gun still to his head, he starts pulling the trigger incessantly. I can do this all day long, he says, to the sound of the hammer clicking.

I can do this a thousand times, ten thousand times. 10,000 times. Nothing will ever happen. Why? Because you have missed something. You are operating on an assumption about reality that is wrong. I mean, that's fucking,

it's very, very, very, very Crowley. It's very Natim Blavatsky. Because like, he says he saw him put the bullet in there. Yeah.

So what happens? Why didn't the bullet eat he pulls it nine thousand times? His thing is that McAfee knew how to do this manipulation. where he probably pocketed the bullet or did something. And that's why he's saying your assumption about reality is wrong. But the mythos he builds around himself is the idea that like he's a crazy man who I thought

was going to shoot himself and it didn't happen. And he kept pulling the trigger and it didn't happen. And like what about him is so special? Like he makes he I. But what's crazy. But like here's interesting is like him. If say we take that as true, right? Like he he maybe is playing up his own insanity.

His own playing it up led to. a death that was equivalent to it as if he was living that life anyway, right? I'm not even sure that when they said he died, he died. Like, I don't even know that he was dead. That might just be another thing because, again, the amount of people trying to, like Alex mentioned, he had people constantly after him on like all of his, is, according to him. Right. But like, the idea that hackers are out to get him, the idea that the government's out to get him,

the idea that like central American governments out to get him, that drug dealers, like the amount of people out to get him, him faking his death would, I'd be like, yeah, I believe that. Perfect. Yeah. Well, keep watching, folks. That first raid is actually just barely the start of some shit, though, because now comes the first big mystery in the true crime story. On November 12, 2012, the Belize PD arrives at McAfee's house on Ambergrie, Cameron,

Ambergy Key and began searching the premises, telling him he's a POI in the shooting death of his neighbor, another American, a man called Gregory Viant Fall, who was found murdered in his own home execution style the day before. There was no sign of force entry. They found a single 9mm shell casing, and his laptop and his iPhone were gone. The story goes that there was some sort of, like, dispute over the crazy army of, like, scary dogs, which John kept all around his property, along with the... like ex-convict army, which not only scared the shit out of his neighbor fall and anybody else

who visited over at his house who had to walk past McAfee's house, but they were also like insanely loud and crazy and like he didn't control them and they just shit everywhere and all that stuff. It did a bunch of drugs at the house. Yeah, exactly. Within the previous month, up leading up to his death, Fall and several other co-signing neighbors had filed a official complaint against John McAfee. Here's a quote for that.

for Jesse to read right here. This is the official text of the complaint. The residents and visitors of the Matagrande subdivision and surrounding properties petition, local authorities, to address three issues affecting our safety, health, and tourism, says the complaint. These problems are all at the residence of John McAfee. The petition charges that security guards on McAfee's property walk around with shotguns at night and up and down the beach. They have been known to shine spotlights right into people's eyes at night and act aggressively with their guns, chambering a bullet and nonsense such as this. People are scared to walk down the beach at night as a result. The tourists are terrified.

The complaint also alleges that taxis and delivery trucks arrive at McAfee's house at all hours, and that vicious dogs on his property are running amok. These animals get loose and run as a pack. Three residents have been bitten and three tourists have been attacked. According to the complaint, when one of McAfee's dog, attacked a young female tourist, a neighbor who had witnessed the attack confronted McAfee, who had also witnessed the attack. McAfee did nothing about it, as the complaint. Neighbors told ABC News that Fall, F-A-U-L-L, who lived 300 yards from McAfee,

was the person who confronted McAfee. So that's what's going on according to the complaint of everybody else who lived there besides the one guy who says something else different was happening. during the night the police arrived McAfee was acting super weird because according to him he thought that his previous altercation with the police where they were sort of in his mind stealing his army

he thought that that meant they wanted to kill him and that this was just a continuing part of this sort of like like I told you the sort of KGB style interrogation that he was saying they were doing according to McAfee not only had fall previously poisoned four of his dogs in revenge for this moment

but but McAfee then he said that he had to shoot four of the dogs to put them out of their misery and he was just furious but he also thought that probably the reason that Fall was dead wasn't because of anything with his dogs

but because he thinks that the police probably shot him instead of instead of him because he was another American guy and they just made a mistake and he was so scared of answering questions that he literally buried himself in the sand for hours

with a cardboard box over his head to avoid the police. He was like literally buried his whole body under the sand like fucking a psychopath and covered his head in a cardboard box like solid snake. Anyway, meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Belize, having heard

about everything that went on, called his behavior paranoid, called him bonkers. And just before the end of the year in December, John McAfee decides to flee Belize in 2012 while under investigation as an active murder suspect. But never to do anything the easy way he brings his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend Samantha with him, whose uncle just happens to be the

recent ex-attorney general of a very scary unpopular regime in Belize that they just recently ousted. But also he invites a journalist and cameraman from Vice to come along with him all the way back in 2012, by the way, to shoot everything that happens. So the documentary is made up of the footage that these guys never got to put out 10 years earlier. Yeah. That's crazy. And so he brings, he's just like, they're like, you want to come. with us and they're like, uh, free

giant news story, fuck yes. And so they embed with him basically and shoot everything that happens. And they cross some ethical lines for sure with him in the, you know, at that point because they're kind of trapped with him. And there's a crazy article out there about that that you can like listen to for an hour or you can read it. It's really great.

On Vice. And I think it'll be in the show notes. And even though they wouldn't publish the footage back then, like I said, Netflix then bought the footage made a documentary called Running with the Devil from it. And I think that came out in 2021 or 2022. I think we watched it together.

Yeah, we watched it on, I think. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, but that same month, while they were hiding at a hotel in Guatemala, Vice is like sending like photos with their articles that they took with the cameras. And cameras like put metadata on pictures, right? So like if you're taking a picture somewhere, it tags it geographically where you are. And so they sent those pictures to Vice and they told them, hey, can you please screenshot the pictures before you post them? But they did not do that.

And so it immediately leaked McAfee's location to anyone who was looking for him. And he responded by starting a blog about his adventures. And then he tried to get an asylum in Guatemala City and he got arrested instead. It was looking real bad for Vice. And it was looking real bad for him and his girlfriend and everybody. And about a day later, reports come out that McAfee suffers two heart attacks. overnight because he's so stressed from being on the run from being pursued he's like anxious he can't handle it's taking you know his toll his body is you know ravaged by drugs in his youth or whatever

but according to mackafee who would also take into wearing various wigs at this time and walking with a cane and like pretending to have palsy literally pretending to have palsy to get like to get past people he claimed that he only faked the heart attacks so that he had time for his lawyer to file some appeals that eventually got him deported to the year USA, except his girlfriend didn't get to come, so he just left her in Belize, and he just went back to the USA by himself. The very night that he arrived in the United States, he then hooked up with a sex worker, 30 years his younger, called Janice Dyson in South Beach, Florida, and they stayed together going forward from that night. The very first day after he left his girlfriend behind in the other

country, they stayed together, and eventually she married him the next year in 2013, claiming that he saved her from like sex traffickers and stuff by moving them out to Portland, Oregon where they then lived. On the other hand, though, Gregory Falls family members, the guy with the who was pet with the dog complaint, who were understandably fucking furious about what was going on with John McAfee, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him in Florida immediately when he got back to the United States. But John McAfee promptly ignored it and requested a dismissal.

And this got tied up in court for like a couple years. And that's what happened. in 2013. Pretty crazy. During the shooting of running with the devil, though, another thing that's crazy that happened around this time and all the interviewing that happened is that the original journalist from Vice was like watching the footage back,

and he realized that in a couple of different scenes, and it's like he doesn't put it together. He says it in the movie because he thinks it's worth saying, but he doesn't say it straight up that it's an accusation. But he kind of sees that maybe John also might have staged his dad's death as a suicide and actually shot him himself in a similar way. Mm-hmm.

And so they don't go too far into it because it's like more of a hunch than anything based on some specific files where he almost walks up to the line of saying that he did that. And if you know what I'm saying in the middle of explaining another story. But if he did kill his dad execution style like that, that's precedence. It's another whole other layer as to why he constantly probably refers back to how bad of a person was. Right.

In some way, trying to justify it to himself. Exactly. Like I said, there are layers to this shit where I don't know, there's a lot of talk that he says about things in his life where the more you dig into it, the more you're just like, so did he just lie about a thing because he did something even worse? But he'd rather the lie live because it's not as bad as the real thing that occurred. It's like better. That's most of this stuff. And it's wild. Yeah, absolutely fucking insane.

in 2013 right after that John found the future tense central company which is an incubator which also developed a secure network device called the D central and then that same year he also uploads this crazy video to his channel how to uninstall McAfee antivirus if you've never seen it it's insane it's like him with like coke blown out of his nose and shooting a bunch of guns and it got like 10 million views he's like joking about it he's talking shit on McAfee in it He parodies the like sort of image of himself that he's created of like a like a Coke head like sort of gun nut paranoid freak. He surrounds himself with hot bitches and he talks shit on the company.

It's pretty crazy moments after he just got back from being accused of murder. He's like doing these weird goofy videos. Also the arrow trekking class victim, Robert Gilson, his family, files a wrongful death lawsuit against McAfee as well where he's ordered to pay $2.5 million in 2014 for back. damages because he lost it by default because he just ignored all the summons. And he refused to pay the $2.5 million as well. And so that just disappeared. But also much to his satisfaction, briefly, when McAfee was finally purchased by Intel in 2010, the company McAfee, they slowly started to shift away from using the name McAfee. And he thought that was awesome because by 2014,

McAfee became Intel security. And he said, quote, I am now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet. And so he was like talking shit. And then he launched the smartphone app cognizant in 2014, which shows the permissions of other apps on your phone, which is kind of a neat thing. Eventually, it was named DeCentral 1,

just like that other product that he made. His secure network advice kept the same name. And then in August of 2014, he speaks at DefCon, which is like the hacker convention in Vegas. And he warns people of the possible... For those for you... I love that.

I must stress if you've ever been to Evo, it happens roughly the same time. So you will be going to like the fighting game and you have to walk past that hacker con. And it is wild. I what does a hacker con look like? Oh, dude. They give like talks. It's like a, it's like a serious thing. And what's crazy is at Evo, they have to say to you, hey, by the way, there's a hacker convention.

So, you know, be careful. which is wild. They're like, do not try to get on the internet in your hotel. Do not. I was like, oh,

okay. It's wild. That's nuts. Yeah. So in August 2014, when we may have been there, he spoke at the DefCon Hacker Convention and he warned people of the possible security risk,

they might not realize or inherent in smartphone use, ultimately advocating against the widespread use of smartphones in general. Also, in August 2015, just a little bit after that, he was arrested. for a DUI for having a firearm while intoxicated on Xanax.

And I got a little quote for whoever, who needs to read right now? Is it Jesse's turn? Mathis's turn? Okay. This is a quote for him. I was impaired. I must admit, McCaffey told CNBC. Here's a story according to him.

I had just that morning received a prescription for Xanax from a doctor. I'd never taken them before. McCaffey said he was driving when his phone fell between his seat in the console of the car. and as he was digging to retrieve it, his driving became erratic. A highway patrol officer pulled him over. The arresting officer decided that I needed a blood test, which I agreed to. McCaffey also admits he had a weapon in the car. I always carry a weapon and if you are not impaired in the state of Tennessee,

it is not illegal to have weapons in the car. So we'll just have to wait and see what the judge says about that. One report claims alcohol was involved, but McCaffey said that is not the case and he is confident the blood test results will prove that. Earlier reports claimed McCaffey said there was a shootout with police, but he told CNBC that was his joking reply to questions from a British newspaper. What a way? Complete lie.

He said that when the reporter for a tabloid asked about the shootout, he foolishly replied, as soon as I heard gunfire, I assume my ex-wife had caught up with me and naturally returned fire. In truth, there was no shootout. McCaffey also joked to this reporter that he was innocent of all charges and a time-stamped sex tape of him and his wife would exonerate him. So he was all over the place. Yeah, yeah, a little bit.

And like, I don't know. I just don't know how sober this dude was, really. You know what I mean? Like he says he was sober since the 80s. I don't know. I'm not buying it. He definitely was on Xanax here, but he says it was a prescription. But I think he was abusing.

I think he was abusing drugs a little bit. But that didn't stop him from announcing a presidential. run on September 15th, 2015, as the very first candidate of the newly formed Cyber Party. He adjusted this to the Libertarian Party by Christmas Eve, because that was very dumb. The Cyber Party in the late 90s. Yeah. I was like,

what are you wearing? ASL. Yeah, ASL. And he participated in the March. It's not an O, it's a zero. Yes. I'm cyber. It's cyber. Cybor. He participated in March

2016 libertarian debate, which was like the first televised one. And he came in second in the primaries and third at the Libertarian National Convention. He was taken quite seriously because he's very rich. The funny thing is, though, his political views don't seem that crazy 10 years on from 2016. Big ones for him were like free market with free trade, stopping the redistribution of wealth, having a foreign policy based on staying out of other people's business, decriminalizing drugs, abolishing the TSA, religious freedom for all.

And then obviously like web security was a big one. him hilariously. But yeah, like that doesn't sound that evil compared to what's going on nowadays. And in the Washington Times in 2016, he was quoted as saying, quote,

no one is forcing you to buy anything or to choose one person over another. So why should I be forced to do anything if I am not harming you? It's my choice to sell your choice to buy. That's his very libertarian-ass sort of mentality. He started the security company Everkey in January of 2016.

And in February, as a publicity stunt, he offered to decry the iPhone. I don't know if you remember there was a terror attack in San Bernardino, California at the inland regional center. There was like a terrorist attack where there were these two guys and there was a cell phone that was locked that the FBI was having trouble. Oh, that's right. Yes, yes, yes.

He offered to hack that phone. In May of that year, he was also named the CEO and chairman at MGT Capital, even after, we're like years after his murder charges, unresolved murder charges, by the way. And he was named CEO and chairman of MGT Capital Investments, which is a social gaming and tech holding company, where he basically left turn pivoted the entire company into yet another cybersecurity company. He made the Sentinel Intruder Detection Hardware for Systems

and E-Tagged, which tracks the physical movement of smartphones at other similar devices for the purposes of surveillance. You can track where a person's body is in a building based on their phone or something like that. The technology Batman used in the dark night? Yeah, basically. As a publicity stunt for MGT, John claimed to have found an exploit in Android

that let him read other people's WhatsApp posts. I don't know if you remember this. He made like a big viral splash about saying he just could read other people's WhatsApp. But actually, he supplied journalists with pre-hacked phones to make it work. So he didn't even do anything interesting. He just like fucked them over.

Yeah. Also, in 2016, the New York Stock Exchange refused to list shares, which MGT needed to buy certain technologies and eventually a bunch of extra stuff the company was working on suddenly became vaporware for this reason. And the whole thing got re-centered fully around the Sentinel sort of security hardware. And weirdly, as an extent of that somehow, Bitcoin mining, which somehow McAfee, Macafee, that doesn't sound too out of that of character. Well, he was saying, he was saying, he was convincing people that he needed to do Bitcoin mining

for cybersecurity purposes so that he could like be sharp in the space. Does that make sense? like when I buy a video game because I'm a video game YouTuber. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, fair enough. All right. Yeah, yeah. In his mind. In his mind, right?

Yeah, something like that. In 2016, there's another documentary called Gringo that came out that's earlier than the Netflix one that's on showtime. It's called Gringo, the dangerous life of John McAfee. And it carried with it some crazy accusations which add on to the things that have already happened and make things seem even darker in Belize than we thought. firstly, according to the herbal biologist Allison and Adonizio, even though their business started off well, John slowly lost his grip in Belize,

and she said they eventually parted ways when he fucking drugged her and then raped her, which honestly is like a crazy hard scene to watch in that movie. And, you know, just in case you're wondering if all the bad stuff he was doing was just in his head or not, let me tell you, it was not all in his head. However, I will, out of fairness, say that he says this did not occur, just so you know.

Of course. But he, yeah, again, he's already proven in the course of this episode. Right. He's an unreliable narrator. Right. Exactly. And in addition to that, it also brought in some interviewees that claim that McAfee actually may have paid a hitman to kill Gregory Fall in response to their fight over his dogs.

And that furthermore, there was even another guy, David Middleton, who McAfee, like, paranoidly became convinced and stolen shit out of his house. who he then had abducted and, like, beaten, and then that guy died from getting beaten by some dudes. And the crazy thing is about all that, and the confusing thing is, though, really, you have to kind of go watch the movie yourself to believe it. But, like, later, and there's like a 2020 that you got to catch to,

to really see how weird it is. The same people who said all the stuff about John paying people to kill people, then turned around and recanted it and claimed that the director had paid them to say what the director wanted them to say and even requested a cease and assist against the director. And then John, like, made a big blog post about it on his blog and was like, yeah, see, I told you, you can do whatever you want in Belize, if you have the right money. They came in with their story.

It was a hit piece on me, yada, yada, yada, yada. But then the director of the documentary is now accused. She goes back to Belize, and she's like, what the fuck? And they're like, sorry about that. John paid us to say that. We know it's not true, but we needed the money because we are poor and we live in Belize. And she was like, fuck, right?

So now it's like impossible to see. say what the real version of events is and who did what because you've got the same people in two documentaries that have not been taken down one on John's channel and one official one on Showtime where they're saying the same exact people are saying the exact opposite thing and he also denies raping that that biologist in the same in the same email here's a quote from him to read that is for Jesse please showtime show some grace and simply pay me without the formality of having to deal with lawyers. I will accept 500 million.

Thank you. Yeah, in 2017, Intel Security was converted into a joint venture between Intel and TPG Capital. And to his dismay, was rebranded again as McAfee when they like spun it out. They just like renamed it McAfee again. So it was like, fuck. I know they exist because my brother was recently contracted to work for them

like a couple months ago. Yeah, they're back. Is that a conflict of interest? Are we in trouble now? I mean, they haven't slipped me any money. but if they want to, they can. We'll delete this episode, McAfee. You're going to have trouble.

I'll disclaim it. Yeah. Starting in March of 2017, buzz around a McAfee biopic starts. Johnny Depp, Seth Rogan, Michael Keaton, Zach Efron attached. Ultimately,

ended up going nowhere, though, but it was like a weird time. This guy, again, murderer probably in the media, like very clearly seems to be a murderer. But in May, he was interviewed about the murder again on 2020,

and he maintained his innocence. And this is where we get some of that follow-up on the showtime story I was talking about. And it's another great interview. Like if you're going to watch one, the 2020 one is good. It's on YouTube. You can check it out. I'll try and link it in the show notes. In July 2017, John said he would eat his own dick on national TV if Bitcoin didn't jump to 500K in three years.

And then a million by the end of 2020. But that did not happen, but he did not eat his shake. Yeah. I would have loved to watch that. No. No. I would be, I would just, it'd be fine just to know. I don't need to check it.

I don't need to like, it's not like a doubting Thomas scenario for me. I would trust it. You trust the problem. You can't trust that thing this guy says. That's all right. It doesn't matter to me that much whether or not he eats his own dick. In 2017, August, he steps down as a CEO of MGT, this company that he's been with. He briefly continues working there under the title of cheap cybersecurity visionary, but then he leaves to work in crypto in 2018.

So now you know what kind of guy he is in 2018. You're not just a cybersecurity expert. You're a visionary. He's a crypto cybersecurity expert. In June 2018, he tweets he's running for president again in the next election, probably as a libertarian again, which is exactly what he ended up doing, mostly running on a cryptocurrency based policy this time, which kind of was weird. In August 2018, he became the CEO of a cryptocurrency company called LuxCore, which is a horrible

name. And then that same November, after refusing to dismiss the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of the victim George Gregory Fall, excuse me. McAfee failed to appear in court, lost the case, and was ordered by the courts to pay $25 million to the man's family, which he then did not do. In January 2019, John said that taxes were illegal and that he hadn't filed a tax return since 2010.

He said he'd have to continue his presidential campaign in exile because he and his staff were all indicted for tax felonies, even though the IRS never confirmed this. He said he was going to Venezuela, and he got in trouble with the libertarians for saying nice things, about Che Guevara. And then in July of 2019, he was arrested on his yacht in Puerto Rico for possession of high caliber weapons and ammo.

All his weapons were seized and he was held for four days. Then in November of 2019, John McAfee tweeted an important tweet, along with a photo of a tattoo. Here's the tweet, and you can describe the tattoo to everybody too. Okay. So the tweet says, getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect, we're coming for you, McCaffee. We're going to kill yourself. Yeah, that's what it says.

I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whacked. Check my right arm. What does that tattoo say, Jesse? Well, it's dollar sign. W-H-A-C-K-D. Swacked, if you will.

Yeah. Available only on macafidex. Which is like a meme coin. Swacked. Which is a little. But in January 2020, he admitted he lied about his Bitcoin value dick eating prediction. He wasn't being serious because he was trying to get more people to use Bitcoin, claiming that it was a limited ancient technology.

So that's why he didn't eat his dick. And then by March of 2020, just as COVID is kicking off, McAfee suspends his campaign for president, endorses that guy, Vermin Supreme, who if you don't know who Vermin Supreme is, he looks like this. He looks like this. You need to. You need to go learn who Vermin Supreme is. He has a boot on his head a lot of the time.

Yeah. So he endorsed Vermin Supreme instead. And then he announced that he was still running for vice president before taking that back the very next day. Just kind of being like, actually, probably nobody's going to vote for me, right? I'm like on the run at this point. You know, nobody wants to do this. Yeah. And by the end of the cycle, even though he endorsed and ran with Adam Kokesh a bit, who's more like the more straight-laced, sensible society compatible type of libertarian,

if you know what I mean, even though he's still ready, even though he's still like anti-government and he was literally running a campaign to like dissolve the federal government. But then John failed to qualify for a nomination at the 2020 Libertarian National Convention in May. So that was the end of his vice presidential dreams. In August, he said he'd been arrested in Norway for wearing a thong over his face instead of an N95 and refusing to change it because he's a hero to anti-max maskers, I guess. And he even posted a picture of himself being. escorted away with the black eye. But then people noticed that the cop in the picture actually had a German like phrase on the uniform. And it turned out that he wasn't even in Norway and that he was just trying to get into Germany and couldn't and wasn't even arrested. But he just posted a picture

of it and lied anyway. And then in October of 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain for tax evasion by request of the U.S. Justice Department, who alleged that he had failed to file any income tax returns for millions and millions of dollars made between 2014 and 2018. And later that month, the SEC also filed a complaint against McAfee. And for some reason, his bodyguard also for engaging in like pump and dump crypto, where McAfee was saying he was just an investor and presented to say his own opinion about cryptocurrencies when really he got paid like $23 million in assets for doing so. And in March of 2021, he was formally indicted and held in Spain.

On June 23, 2021, he was found dead by hanging in his cell. in a manner most obviously resembling a suicide, and according to forensics, a few hours after his extradition back to Tennessee had been authorized by the Spanish courts, he probably hanged himself likely to avoid the consequences of a long string of unresolved problems and criminal charges. An official autopsy confirmed the cause of death is suicide. He was officially ruled dead by suicide in the Spanish courts. And as you might expect, some people's only reasonable response to that is to say, no, it's conspiracy. People always sort of point to that whacked tweet as the start of all that, obviously. But also obviously in the wake of Epstein and after his lawyers swore that he didn't seem suicidal, and after his wife, Janice, the ex-sex worker from South Beach, who was still married to him all these years later, claimed that the investigation into his death wasn't thorough enough.

Naturally, the whole thing is a big question now. and all the crazy ideas he's had over the years about who's following him and why become more and more tempting to sort of like entertain as if they were real as time goes on if you are investigating John McAfee but still if you look into them nothing ever comes up he wasn't being chased like that a bunch of people hated him and wanted to ring him to justice for crimes he definitely committed but he probably was not on the run from like contract killers really at any given point probably probably and that's the best we'll ever real say is probably yes but then again that's a lot of crypto money and stuff tied up and all this right yeah what do you think what do you

think is the level of realness genuine well do you know i mean like are you aware of i mean hold on i'll just go look it up when he so there's a post on so like john mackafee his twitter still active to this day. Yes. And I think it's supposed to be run by his wife, I think. Yes. But with that said, June 23rd, 2025, literally his wife is saying that, you know, who was found dead by suicide, and they reported it to the world before she was notified or his attorneys were notified. And then she goes on to say that like, weird that the prison we learned he was alive when they found his body, but they didn't give him CPR. What's that about? And then they talk about, like, like CIA agents, literally she is keeping it going.

It's crazy because it actually all the, the Twitter came back in 2025 originally to launch a new meme coin called AI, AI antivirus, but it says AI instead of A. It's like a anti, AI antivirus. And everybody thought it was a hack at first, but then she comes out and she said that she made the, the meme coin to honor John's legacy in his memory. But then at one point,

had a market capitalization of $37 million. So, like, I'm sure there was a little bit more going on than just honoring his memory. I don't know. I don't know. Super crazy. But, you know, now that he's dead and his story is weird and sad and frustrating, but oddly compelling. And rather than know any sort of truth about what was going on at the core of this man, at least we can all kind of know what we think of him now by the end of this, right?

His body was finally released from the fridge at the Justice of Barcelona to be buried in America. over two years later in December of 2023, he just spent two years chilling. He left nothing to anybody, no will, no estate, probably a little bit what had to do with that meme coin being launched. And regardless of whether it's a net positive or a negative, he's undoubtedly left an impression on people. You know, there's all sorts of art and songs and raps and memes about him,

especially in the crypto world, which is so terminally online that it's excruciating, like cringe level 6 million over there in the cryptos. crypto world. If you ever want to watch that one cocaine video he made how to uninstall or an antivirus, you'll see what I mean. It's like just so like my dad gave me the money to afford an editor. But yeah, he's kind of a hero for the Elon Musk is a genius in 2026 types, I think still today. And his reputation as a like rich, weird guy who goes off the grid with guns and drugs is like kind of an archetype almost at this point. He's like made a new type of guy. You know what I mean?

like that's a new type as there's like more and more insane rich people in the world he's kind of like one type uh also not as important but i saw on wikipedia that in july of 2022 it was revealed that mr boss from smiling friends was lightly based on john mackoffey which i don't know if you seen that show too much but that makes fucking sense now you think about it um that is the story of john mackoffy what a fucking crazy weird guy that fucking guy is yeah one of my favorite more modern insane people that who's whose history you can't even fully understand highly suggest to go those documentaries the the i think you should watch the first documentary then you should watch the 2020 and then you should watch the second documentary both of them aren't very long you'll be done in like

a couple hours you know do it in two nights it's a crazy situation over there it's a crazy situation yeah thank you so much that's it we'll be back next week with a brand new episode uh we appreciate you we're off to go to a minnesota over at patreon dot com slash illuminati pod as always we appreciate you we love you'll see you next time goodbye oh bye bye for sitting outside indulging on our porch one night enjoying ourselves. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside, and after a few moments, I hear my wife go, holy shit, get out here. So I quickly dashed back outside.

She's looking up in the sky in the fall. I look up to you, and there's a perfect line of dozen lights traveling across the sky.