Scamfluencers - John McAfee: The Antisocial Virus | 219

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

John McAfee was a brilliant but volatile programmer who helped pioneer antivirus software, making himself a fortune in the early days of personal computing. But he had an addictive personality and a short attention span, so after walking away from cybersecurity, he spent his life chasing bigger thrills, taking wilder risks, and getting into trouble in multiple countries. Behind the scenes, a lifetime of relentless self-indulgence was destroying everything – and everyone – around him, leaving him high, broke, and on the run from the U.S. authorities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Audible subscribers can listen to all our episodes of scam influencers ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. A heads up to our listeners, this episode contains mention of suicide and descriptions of sexual assault. Please listen with care. Sarah, I'm assuming you had a computer in the 90s. Is that right? Well, I personally didn't because I was a child, as were you. But I did come from a family where we had computers and internet very early. Like, we had all this stuff before other people did.

So I've been online, you know? Right. You come by it honestly. Well, what do you remember about McAfee antivirus software? I remember it just being everywhere. Like, every single computer had that antivirus software. But I also remember my father not really liking it and thinking it was kind of basic. But it was definitely a time when everyone was downloading things for the first time

and anything could give you a virus, you know? Yeah, it felt like for a time you could not use a computer without being bombarded by McAfee notifications. Well, today, we're going to talk about the man behind the name and how he went from coding genius to lifestyle guru to repeated international fugitive. It's 2013 in Portland, Oregon. John McAfee is sitting behind a desk on a small set in front of a green screen.

He's in his late 60s, tall and lanky, with the weathered skin of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun. He's wearing a smoking jacket over a formal suit, and his dark gray hair and beard are streaked with lighter patches. For decades, John has been known as the guy who created one of the first antivirus programs for personal computers, a piece of software that ended up on millions of machines and made him a fortune. Today, John's filming a public service announcement about the software that still carries his name. But he's not here to help people with their tech problems.

he's here to reintroduce himself to the world. The director yells action and John launches in. Oh, hello there. My name is John McAfee. I'm the founder of the McAfee Antivirus Software Company. Although I've had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years, I still get volumes of mail asking, how do I uninstall this software?

I have no idea. John slips a cigarette between his lips and holds up a $100 bill. From off camera, a young woman reaches in with a lighter. McAvey sets the bill on fire and uses it to light up. He looks straight to camera and says an assistant will help explain how to uninstall the software. As John stands up to introduce him, several women step into frame and remove his smoking jacket. Underneath, he's wearing striped boxers.

While the assistant explains how to uninstall the software, the camera cuts back to John sitting behind his desk. Now, it's covered in guns and white bags labeled Bath salts. Six women slowly take off his suit jacket, giggling and kissing him and each other. Shirtless, John leans over the desk and snorts a line of white powder. When he looks up, his face is covered in it. You know, something went wrong. Fifteen years ago, I had some beautiful software and they took it over. I don't know what they did.

It was like the time I hired that Bangkok prostitute to do my taxes while I f***ed by a accountant. It was terrible. the same thing is going on now. But I know what to do. I know exactly what to do. Believe me, I've got a fucking solution right here. John loads a gun, stands, and shoots a laptop.

Then he puts on a fedora while one woman shoulders a semi-automatic rifle. John winks, wraps his arm around the woman, and walks off screen. He can't wait to post the video on his brand new YouTube channel. You know, I think in 2026,

we're really used to watching these public rebranding crashouts from extremely wealthy people. But I do remember around the time this was happening that it was one of those things that just felt so not so crazy that I just kept seeing headlines and clips of these videos and being like, I actually can't focus on this. It's too weird and odd. Yeah, unfortunately, this really established a bad, exhausting precedent.

For more than two decades, John's been defined by his early success. even after he cashed out from his company and moved on to run a yoga retreat, a daredevil flight school, and a medical lab in Belize. But about a year ago, things took a turn when his neighbor in Belize was found dead. The police tried to question John, and he went on the run, setting off an international manhunt. Now he's back in the United States and leaning hard into the rumors about his life in Belize, that he dates young women, many at a time, that he uses basalt, that he's paranoid and gun-happes.

be, forgive me, Sarah, but to quote Maya Angelou, when people show you who they are, believe them. Because the thing is, all those rumors are true. And now he wants people to know it. John thinks subverting his public image as the antivirus guy is hilarious. And it frees him to do his very favorite thing, whatever the hell he wants. He's about to embark on his third act. One last hurrah that will see John reinvent himself as a presidential candidate and cryptocurrency guru. It's a run that will end with criminal charges, another international manhunt, and a tragic end that will only deepen the mystery around him and his legacy. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care,

patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies. This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death, The Cowboy, wherever you get your podcasts, or binge the entire series right now, only with Audible. Whether you're exploring your fascinations

or discovering new ones, Ottawa has stories that will introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy-romanticy series. Know how true the latest blockbuster movie stayed to the sci-fi story it was based on or find unexpected reveals through an exclusive true crime podcast.

However you listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating. Select any audiobook every month plus exclusive podcasts. Plans now start at 899. Audible. Be fascinated. Be fascinating. From Audible Originals, I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagey.

And this is scam influencers. John McAfee was a brilliant but volatile programmer who helped people. pioneer anti-virus software, and made himself a fortune in the early days of personal computing. He had an addictive personality in a short attention span. So after walking away from cybersecurity with tens of millions in the bank, he spent his life chasing thrills, taking risks, and seeking attention. John wanted to be seen as a brilliant tech visionary who fought for the right to privacy in personal liberty.

But behind the scenes, a lifetime of relentless self-indulgence came at the expense of those around him and left him high, drunk, and broke. When the money ran out, John did what he always did. He reinvented himself. And when he turned to promoting little-known cryptocurrencies, he also started quietly cashing out, making money off the very hype that he was creating. John's prominence in tech and pop culture raises uncomfortable questions about the near invisible line between subversion and scamming. Questions that today feel more relevant than ever. This is John McAfee. the antisocial virus. It's 1945, and in the mining town of Cinderford, England,

John McAfee is born on a U.S. Army base to an American serviceman and a British mother. But not long after, John and his family moved across the pond to Virginia. John's childhood there is rough. His dad is an alcoholic who physically and emotionally abuses both John and his mom. Then, when John is just 15 years old, his dad shoots himself with a shotgun. The trauma follows John for the rest of his life. Sarah, can you read what he later told Wired magazine? He says,

Every day I wake up with him. Every relationship I have, he's by my side. Every mistrust. He is the negotiator of that mistrust. So my life is fucked. Well, yeah, I mean, that is a pretty accurate description of daddy issues that a lot of the people we cover seem to have, I'd say. Yeah, it's certainly a variation on a theme.

Well, after high school, John majors in math at a small college in Virginia, where he says he paid his way through school by selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. By now, he's grown into a striking figure, tall, with bright blue eyes and dark hair, a deep voice with a southern twang, and an easy charm, all of which helps in sales, whether it's magazines or the other commodity he deals in college, cocaine. It's the beginning of his life as an entrepreneur. After graduating, John moves to Louisiana to pursue a PhD. And that's where he starts another lifelong pattern, going after very young women.

He starts dating one of his students, an 18-year-old named Fran. When the university learns about the relationship, they kick him out of the program. So, John looks for work that will use his brilliant mathematical mind and make him money, and he discovers a burgeoning field, computer science. Over the next decade, John works as a programmer for companies all over the U.S., including Xerox, Siemens, Booz Allen, and even NASA. But he's also battling multiple addictions to drugs, alcohol, and maybe even sex. His former fiancé during this time says that he was constantly cheating on her. Luckily, he finds the perfect landing spot, a place where his brilliance will be rewarded and his bad behavior tolerated.

Silicon Valley. In the early 80s, John moves to the Bay Area to become the head of R&D for OMEX, the data storage company. He drives a motorcycle to work and arrives whenever he wants, often nursing skull-crushing hangovers,

and disregards both budgets and deadlines. At work, he snorts Coke to wake up, pops quay ludes when he needs to come down, and sips scotch in the afternoons to even everything out. But he's also constantly hammering out code. Can you read what his boss at the time later told Bloomberg? Yeah, she said, It took me all of 15 minutes in the R&D lab to realize he was brilliant. I didn't care if he

set up a bar in R&D and drank all day long. If he could solve the kinds of technical problems he was solving, then he was my guy. That is a very bad precedent and at what cost, you know? Yep. Once again, John is at the forefront of an extremely troubling trend. Unchecked power for tech nerds, what could go wrong? Well, for a while, John is able to indulge his every impulse without consequence. But even Silicon Valley has its limits. And eventually, John will be forced to make a choice, change his life, or risk following in his father's tragic footsteps. By the early 80s, John's hard-living lifestyle has finally worn out its welcome at Omex. No longer employed, he sits at home, alone, high and drunk, and contemplates taking his

own life. He knows he can't keep going like this. So maybe thinking about his father's fate, John decides to make a change. He starts seeing a therapist and attends his first AA meeting, and at 38 years old, he gets sober. Later, he'll tell Wired, quote, that's when life really began for me. John gets a job at Lockheed Martin. He also gets married to a woman named Judy. And with a clear mind, he becomes laser-focused on a new frontier, the early internet. At Lockheed, he's exposed to something new and unsettling, computer viruses. In the era of dial-up internet, John installs a second phone line at home so he can be online at all hours, researching viruses and chatting with fellow computer obsessives on early

internet forums. John can see that tech is the future, and if you plays it right, it could make him very rich. Around this time, a piece of destructive code called the Pakistani brain starts making headlines. The virus spreads through infected floppy disks, quietly copying itself from machine to machine. When users try to save a file, they often get a message stating, Welcome to the dungeon. Beware of this virus. Contact us for vaccination. Some estimates say it infected more than 100,000 computers. It's the first time most people realize there's systems are not safe. Wow, this must have been such an amazing time where, like, this sounds like it's out of a movie almost,

where it's like, what my computer is sick? And also it's like, what is it going to do? It's not how we had our data on those things. People weren't doing online banking. What are you stealing? Just a virus for the sake of being a virus? Yeah, they were just stealing the answers to Mind Sweeper. But John sees his opportunity.

He gets a copy of the Pakistani brain code and solves it. like a puzzle. Here he is explaining what he did next to ABC's 2020. I was figuring out, oh, yeah, I could stop this year, I could stop this year, I can do this, I can actually remove the thing, and wrote a program in a day and a half. So McAfee Antivirus was created in a day and a half. Yes. And how well did it work? Four million people were using it within a month. There was a time that every single computer had McAfee Antivirus on it. Like it was just like, there's no question. Yes, exactly. And that's because John's anti-virus.

program spreads super fast because he gives it away for free. He believes in the early internet ethos of programming for the joy of it, just to see what computers can do. But it doesn't take him long to realize he's got something valuable, and he'd be a fool not to capitalize on it. So in 1987, John leaves Lockheed Martin to found his own company, McAfee and Associates. He hires a few people who work out of his house

and comes up with a model that's ahead of its time. McAfee Antivirus is free for individuals. But if businesses are looking to protect their computer systems, they have to pay to license the software. Before long, McAfee Antivirus is everywhere. And within a year, the company grosses $10 million. John is living the dream. A company bearing his name is the hottest thing in tech.

And McAfee and associate starts to reflect its founder's values. employees work hard and play even harder. On any given day, workers show up dressed in medieval clothes, practice sword fighting in the halls, and conduct wickened rituals at lunchtime. There's even a running pool that awards points for having sex in strange places around the office. Though John has forsaken most of his old vices,

he still hasn't given up sex. He's not faithful to his current wife. He reportedly puts together regular sex parties and a McAfee associate's employee later told Bloomberg that a big part of her job was covering up for John when his wife would call. It is really disgusting to imagine that being considered normal at work. I mean, I hope someone sued him.

Yeah, one can only dream. Well, a few years later, in 1992, a new computer virus captures the world's attention, the Michelangelo virus. It's designed to lay dormant until Michelangelo's birthday, when it will erase infected computers hard drives. Sensing another opportunity, John goes on national TV and claims that as many as 5 million computers could be threatened. Sales of McAfee-Antivirus software soar. But when the day comes, almost nothing happens.

The New York Times headline reads, virus barely causes sniffle in computers. In Silicon Valley, John's reputation takes a major hit. He looks like an opportunist who sowed panic just to sell more software. But his big swing and massive payoff grabbed the attention of investors who are dying to get in on the action. John's brilliant coding and taste for the limelight have put his company on the map. But he's about to open up McAfee and associates,

and its unique corporate culture to scrutiny. And Wall Street suits telling him, what to do does not line up with John's idea of success. A few months later, John announces that McAfee and Associates is going public. But before the IPO, a new CEO is brought in, and his first priority is professionalizing the work environment. John is sidelined to chief technical officer, and the writing is on the wall. The company will keep his name, but John isn't destined to be a big part of its future. John isn't totally bummed about this. He's 47. years old, a millionaire, and he's made his mark on the world. It's hard to overstate how ubiquitous

McAfee-antivirus software was in the 90s. John retains his seat on the board for a couple of years, but in 1995, he resigns and cashes out completely. Bloomberg estimates that he walks away with about $84 million. Now in his 50s and incredibly wealthy, John begins looking inward. In his sober years, meditation and yoga have been a huge help to him. So he buys a 280-acre compound in Colorado and builds a yoga retreat. He wants to recreate the sense of community he found in early chat rooms

and at the MacAfee offices. So he allows people to study yoga at the house for free. It seems like he's simply sharing his wealth and paying it forward, but there's also a darker edge to it. Can you read how one former student later described the retreat to Gizmodo? Yes, they said,

Everything was free. You would think that this guy was amazingly generous and kind, but he was getting something out of it. He was interested in being the center of attention. He was surrounded by people who didn't have any money and were depending on him and he could control them. Yeah, I'm familiar with bosses. Like, you know, it's the same concept as like working in an office

that provides all this food. It's like, you're getting a lot more out of this than I am. Yeah, well, new to him, maybe. Well, I mean, it didn't exist back now. This is new. Right. This is new, brand new. And now this is normal, but that was brand new.

Yeah, yeah. Well, John may be sober, but he still has an addictive, thrill-seeking personality. He's really into extreme sports, like ATV racing and open ocean jet skiing. And eventually, yoga isn't enough. Plus, running a yoga retreat full-time sort of lacks some drama. So, John makes his own. By this point, John's marriage. marriage has fallen apart.

He starts dating a teenager named Jennifer, who works at the retreat. And then, in August 2002, he reads about a new kind of aircraft called Trikes. They're super lightweight, basically like motorcycles with wings. A reporter for National Geographic Adventure will later call them personal icarus machines. Sarah, just take a look at one of these things. Okay. You know what? This is cool.

I can't deny that it's cool. It's like what you see in a cartoon. You're like paragliding and you're in a motorcycle-looking vehicle. Also, like, if I was in the right mood, would I do this? Probably. Right. Well, much like you, John is instantly obsessed. So he and Jennifer moved to Arizona to go to flight school,

where he starts flying these ultra-lightweight aircraft extremely close to the ground. Like, 65 miles an hour, just a few feet off. the desert floor. John didn't invent this hobby, but he does give it a name, arrow trekking, and he's ready to make it his whole life. This new hobby gives John all of the adrenaline he can handle and an isolated environment that he can control. He buys 157-acre property in New Mexico and spends $11 million creating a mecca for other thrill-seeking flyers. He also builds a series of airports in the southwest. The home base has a five-bedroom villa, a general store, a cafe, a movie theater, and a swimming pool. In the evenings, John and some

of his 200-odd accolites gather on his villa's patio to watch one of his 6,000 DVDs. Can you read how he describes the setup to National Geographic Adventure? Yes, he says, I'm not trying to turn a profit. I want to provide an environment where anyone who has the spirit of adventure can come out and participate. I feel like John is someone. I feel like John is someone who is just extreme in whatever he's doing, no regard for right or wrong or safety. And that kind of thing is very thrilling if you're around it, like if you're around someone who's just willing to do anything and can do anything they want. But ultimately, it's like, it's crazy and it's dangerous. And you take a step back and you're like, what is going on here?

Yeah. And in 2006, tragedy indeed strikes. One day when John's 22-year-old nephew, Joel Bito, one of the school's flight instructors, is flying with a 61-year-old student. They fly into a canyon and crash. They both die in the accident. It's devastating, but it doesn't stop John from flying. But his turn, a swashbuckling adventurer, has now cost two people their lives. And when it comes to facing the consequences, John's belief in self-reliance will soon be revealed to be pure self-interest. Seven months after the first time, fatal crash, journalist Jeff Wise lounges on the patio of John's New Mexico ranch. Jeff is in his early 40s, handsome with dark brown hair and brown eyes.

He's a journalist and trained pilot, and he's here to interview John. John is now 61 and still completely devoted to arrow trekking. Despite his age, John has the energy of a coaked up teen beach bum, and he looks like one too. He's got spiky hair with bleach tips, pierce. ears, tribal tattoos across his shoulders, and, of course, a goatee. John doesn't apologize for pursuing his whims at all costs, even when there are awful consequences. He still promotes his passions, even after his nephew's death. Jeff asks John about his tendency to go all in on the things he loves, pulling other

wayward souls into his orbit, and then moving on when he's bored. John tells him, quote, I anticipate that happening. It doesn't worry me at all. I feel like because John lives such a fast-paced life, everything is go, go, go, move on to the next thing, everything's so fast. I don't think he has object permanence for anything he does. As long as he can bankroll what he's doing and keep going, there's no moment of self-reflection almost.

It just doesn't really matter, and he can say something like he anticipates something like that happening and it doesn't worry him. It's like you have to just be so far removed from, how reality works to say that. Yeah, he lives pretty consequence-free. And Jeff is charmed by John. He sees him as gregarious, eccentric, and exciting.

And he writes a fairly glowing profile. Then, a few years later, Jeff reads in the New York Times that John is auctioning off the New Mexico ranch. John claims his fortune has dwindled from $100 million to just $4 million and says he's moving to Belize, partly because of its favorable tax laws. Like so many, Jeff has been taken in by John McAfee.

He doesn't know that he's just begun a decades-long relationship with a man who will make him question everything. Soon, Jeff will commit himself to uncovering the truth about the viral scion, even as John soars to greater highs and potentially murderous lows. Hello, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of British Scandal. Yes, we are. And our new series starts with a loud, lovable woman. from Bermansy, who becomes one of the most famous people in Britain.

This is the story of Jade Gooding. The reality TV star who built a fortune just by being herself. And then lost everything in one of the most public racism scandals Britain has ever seen. It's a story of fame. And a change of the conversation around cervical cancer forever. Follow British scandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Audible. I'm Leon Nefok, best known as the co-creator of Slow Burn and Fiasco. I had, of course, heard of OnlyFans,

but always with a distant and quiet skepticism, a silent judgment, you might say. Who is actually using this platform? Um, I am. Hi, I'm OnlyFans creator and comedian Gracie Canaan. I work from home now. I'm on OnlyFans. And in case you guys don't know what OnlyFans is,

ask your husband. My journalistic curiosity got the best of me when I found out that my own sister had started an OnlyFans account. I'm not his sister, just to clarify. It turns out a lot of what I thought I knew about OnlyFans was wrong. I felt like I wasted 3.5 years for something that wasn't real. What happens when connection comes with a price tag?

Listen to OnlyFantasy wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge all episodes of OnlyFantasy ad free right now only on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible app or on Apple Podcasts. It's 2008 and Allison Adoniedse. is celebrating her 30th birthday in tears. From the outside, Allison seems to have it all. She has a PhD in biology and recently received a three-year grant to continue her studies at Harvard. But something doesn't feel right.

The thought of three more years in a lab has her wondering, is this it? Allison feels the itch to get out and explore. So, inspired by a botanist she admires, she heads to Belize, striking a deal with a resort for room and board in exchange for playing guitar for guests. Then, one evening after she finishes a performance, Allison meets John McAfee. We don't know exactly how they struck up a conversation, but John immediately digs into Allison's field of study, which focuses on plant compounds that could prevent bacteria from causing infections by disrupting the way the microbes communicate.

Her work could lead to a new class of antibiotics, which must make her seem like a kindred spirit to someone who built his fortune fighting computer viruses. So John makes Allison an offer on the spot. They'll set up a lab for her here, in Belize, to continue her research. They'll start a new company to explore commercial uses for her natural antivirus substances. Together, he tells Allison, they'll save millions of lives, reinvent the pharmaceutical industry, and change the world. Allison doesn't know about John's history of going all in on this.

things, only to drop them as soon as he gets bored. She just hears a wealthy expat offering her her dream job. So she accepts. John builds Allison a lab on a new compound he's purchased inland. While Allison focuses on her research, John calls journalists to spread the word about their venture. He claims Allison has identified six promising herbs, which isn't true. But he tells Allison that this is how it works with the press. Truth is simply what you can convince. a journalist to publish. Allison is a researcher, not a venture capitalist. She puts her head down and does her work,

but she soon notices that things around the lab start to change. John's intensely interested in the locals, spending a lot of time at a karaoke dive bar slash brothel in a nearby town. And John begins to get pulled deeper and deeper into the local drama, at one point hiring guards to patrol the property with guns and packing the compound with more than a, dozen menacing dogs. And John's unpredictable swings start to impact Allison's job.

Like when he suggests that she pause her research and instead look into an herbal remedy for the female libido. Allison might have thought he was joking, if not for his habit of showing her kink websites and leaving bags of Viagra around his house. I feel like one consistent pattern in John's life is pushing the limit with various women where, again, like, he just does whatever he wants. And this is clearly some form of harassment. Yeah.

And he's just, like, truly such a sicko. Yeah, it's gross. And then he tells Allison that a journalist will be visiting, Jeff Wise from John's arrow trekking days. When Jeff arrives, Allison goes along with John's lie that she's discovered many new compounds. In April 2010, when Jeff finally publishes the article about his trip, it's disastrous.

Jeff questions the viability of their research and proposes an alternate theory for why John relocated to Belize, to avoid a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of the man who'd been killed in that aerotrecking accident. If the court finds John liable, it would be hard to force him to pay the judgment from overseas. Yeah, I mean, it's a classic rich person move to go to some type of tropical, beautiful country and pretend you're there for, like, it's benefits and the life is so much better. better there, but really you're running from the law. Yeah, they do this all the time. Well, Allison is probably devastated when she reads Jeff's article.

It casts her research as a cover for John's attempt to avoid consequences. Things between her and John start to get more tense. And eventually, Allison tells John that she wants to return to the States. Here she is explaining what happened next in the documentary, Gringo, the dangerous life of John McAfee. I told him I had a headache and he went into the other room and he brought me two pills and a glass of orange juice. So I took them, I, you know, and I took a sip of the orange juice and it tasted foul. It tasted bitter. I only have sort of flashes of recollection.

He was standing over me naked. And I woke up the next morning and I was sick. I was dry heaving and I was dizzy and I grabbed my clothes. I don't even remember taking them off. And I went back to my house and I locked myself in my apartment

and I sat in the shower. I sat in the shower for, I don't know, until the water ran cold and I was crying. and I was bleeding. John would later deny Allison's allegations. According to Allison, when she confronted him the next day, he acted like nothing had happened. But when she tells him that she wants to quit,

he explodes, screaming and lunging towards her. Allison runs to her lab and hides as John pounds on the locked door. She manages to email her dad and buy a plane ticket, just before John shuts off the power. Allison texts some friends to come get her and they escort her to the airport. Back in the U.S., Allison reaches out to the FBI, but they tell her they have no jurisdiction in Belize.

So she decides to use something John taught her, power of the press. She reaches out to Jeff and tells him the real story and how thankful she is to have gotten out alive. Allison might be done with Belize, but John is not. and he's about to learn that their government isn't willing to sit back and let him do whatever the hell he wants. In 2012, two years after his last visit,

Jeff Wise heads back to Belize to interview John McAfee again. During his previous trip, John came across as charming and smart and believable. Jeff even bought into the idea that John was trying to revolutionize medicine. Here's Jeff describing that reporting trip later on the podcast on the meet. I went down there and I met this biologist and he showed me the plots of land where he was going to grow these miracle herbs. And I wrote a piece that was really frankly credulous. I basically took what McAfee told me. I took what I'd seen and I'd put it together in 3,000 words.

And my editor, he said this doesn't smell right. This needs more time. So let's hold it and do some more reporting. I think this is probably the best instinct. I think John is someone who is so confident he believes. that he can control any narrative. I feel like journalists are always best when they take their time

and don't rush to a conclusion. Yeah, exactly. Jeff's editor was right, because once Jeff started digging, the story began to fall apart. He discovered the wrongful death civil case tied to John's arrow trekking days, and then Allison reached out

with her own disturbing allegations. Now, two years later, Jeff hears that John has fallen out with his friends and business partners in South America. Something must be happening, so he's back in Belize to catch up with the man he's been writing about for nearly a decade. Right away, Jeff is struck by how much things have changed. John is living in his beachfront home, surrounded by much younger girlfriends. The place is crawling with armed guards, and his dogs roam his property, snapping at people on the public beach nearby.

John still looks far younger than his 67 years of age, but his sense of adventure has given way to roiling paranoia. John tells Jeff there have been 11 attempts to kidnap or kill him in the last year alone. His group of happy thrill seekers has faded away. Now, John doesn't seem to have any friends. He tells Jeff, quote, what does friendship actually mean? It's a commitment to an idea that just doesn't interest me. John's sobriety seems to have lapsed too. Around this time, Jeff discovers messages John posted to a Russian chat room about MDPV,

which is a psychoactive stimulant found in bath salts. It's kind of like fucked up meth. MDPV was banned in the U.S., but it's legal in Belize at the time of John's postings. Can you read some of what John wrote about his experiences? Sure, he wrote, When I first started doing this, I accidentally got a few drops on my fingers

while handling a used flask and didn't sleep for four days. I had visual and auditory hallucinations and the worst paranoia of my life. And in another post, I'm a huge fan. I think it's the finest drug ever conceived, not just for the indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild come down.

You know, I think he operates at such a crazy frequency that he could do bath salts and be like, honestly, pretty smooth. Well, John later claims the posts were a joke, and he adds that he, quote, would never do drugs. According to some experts, paranoia is a common side effect of MDPV,

so it could definitely explain John's change in personality. Two weeks after Jeff returns home, a special Belizean police squad executes a raid on John's property. Between John's strange behavior and his mysterious laboratory, the government suspects he's running a major drug operation. Police find an arsenal of guns and ammunition and bottles of chemicals they can't identify. But no illegal drug operation.

Jeff knows the raid is likely to throw gasoline on the fire of John's paranoia. Then, a few months later, Jeff gets an alarming email from a high-ranking police official in Belize. Sarah, can you read what it says? Yeah, the police official wrote, It may interest you to know that there was a murder yesterday and McAfee is the prime suspect. The victim, Gregory Fall, was his neighbor. McAfee has made himself unavailable and police are actively searching for him. That is so sad.

And I know at this point he's just a suspect, but obviously he's someone who is capable of this. Like it's not a shocking next step in his life. Yeah, we know he's a scary, violent guy. And with every hour that passes, Jeff learns more. The victim was a 52-year-old expat. and before he was murdered, Greg had been complaining to the authorities about John's dogs. The day before Greg's murder, John found his dogs dead. They'd been poisoned. The next morning, Greg's housekeeper discovered Greg's body. He'd been shot in the back of the head at point-blank range.

Belizean authorities are anxious to talk to John, but John is nowhere to be found. He later tells a wired reporter that he hid from the authorities by burying himself up to his neck in the sand and hiding his head under a cardboard box for hours. And then he decided to go on the run. Nothing you're saying right now is computing properly. What is going on here? His dog's dead, a body being discovered, and also literally burying himself in sand with a box over his head for hours?

It's so cartoonishly stupid. Yeah, it's bonkers. And Jeff knows that John is increasingly erratic, constantly lying, and armed to the gills. But could he have resorted to murder? He doesn't know what to make of this tragic turn of events, but soon, John will step in to steer the narrative. Two weeks after Greg Falls murder, Robert King lands in Belize. Rob is in his early 40s with dark hair, a round face, and a southern accent. He's a veteran war photographer who has spent decades bouncing between war zones, winning awards for documenting atrocities.

Just a few days after he got back from Syria, he received a call from Rocco Castoro, editor-in-chief of Vice magazine. John has decided to fight this the only way he knows how by using the media to control the narrative. He's been calling reporters, telling them that he had nothing to do with Gregory's death. And now, he's invited Vice to document his escape. When Rocco asked Robert if he wanted to fly to Belize to embed with a tech multimillionaire on the run, it was an easy yes. So now, Robert is standing outside the airport with Rocco, waiting for John McAfee to pick them up. Yeah, that is something that definitely was happening in 2012. The rule was if you were a crazy guy, you had to invite another crazy guy from Vice to document you being crazy.

Yeah, I mean, I don't make the rules. It was a rule. That's just how it worked then. Well, when the van pulls up, John is sitting in the back seat with one of his girlfriends, 20-year-old Sam. He's dyed his hair, eyebrows, beard, and mustache, Jed Black. They drive to the coast, jump in a speedboat, and gun it for Guatemala. The entire time, Robert is filming. John categorically denies having anything to do with Greg's death.

But he says the Belizean government has it out for him, so he's planning to cross into Guatemala to hunker down in secret and plan his next move. But Guatemalan authorities clock that they don't have the exit stamps on their passports from Belize. The customs officer refuses John's not-so-suttle attempts at a bribe. They want to ship John and everyone else back to Belize. It's clear that John needs a lawyer. Luckily, John's girlfriend, Sam, just happens to be related to Guatemala. as former attorney general, and he's willing to help.

While they wait to meet him, Robert and Rocco decide its time to let the world know about their massive scoop. So Rocco writes up a press release and Robert grabs a photo of him with John. They send it to the vice team back in New York, who posts it under the headline, We are with John McAfee right now, suckers. But right away, their phones start ringing because the geniuses in the New York office posted the photo Robert took instead of a screenshot. So the image contains geotargeted data.

In bragging about their exclusive, Robert and Rocco have just revealed to the world exactly where John is. Oh, brother. This is really stressful and also just like so of the era. It's so Vice. Listen, I did my time at Vice. I worked there and I will say this tracks. Yeah, exactly.

Well, a few days later, Robert is filming John outside the hotel entrance when Guatemalan authorities swarm them. They arrest John for entering the country illegally and release a statement saying they intend to deport him back to Belize. Robert and Rocco hide in their hotel rooms, where they learn that John had a heart attack in custody and has been taken to a local hospital. When they visit him, John says he fake the heart attack to avoid getting deported. Robert and Rocco doubt that ploy will actually work, so they book flights home and head to the airport. Robert grips his passport tightly as they go through La Aurora International Airport, because they still don't have exit stamps from Belize.

He nervously hands his documents to the customs official, who flips to the last page, slaps the stamp down, and ushers Robert along. Beyond relieved, Robert and Rocco sit in an airport bar and order beers. When Robert gets home, he learns that John's fake heart attack ploy worked. He is getting deported, but to the United States. And now that John is back in the U.S., he's ready to reinvent himself and start yet another new chapter. It's the fall of 2015, nearly three years since John fled Belize and ended up back in the U.S. John, now 70 years old, walks into Larry Flynn's Hustler Club.

It's a monument to decadence, nude women dancing, private rooms, and bars doing brisk business. But the tech bros and crypto enthusiasts aren't here just for the usual entertainment. They're also here to raise money for a presidential candidate committed to issues they care about. John McAfee. The night is a success, with tech bros contributing via PayPal and paying in Bitcoin, which is against election laws. But these guys are libertarian. They don't care. John raises around $2 million that night,

and as he looks around at the crowd gathered at this palace of excess, he must think to himself, I am so back. When John was extradited to the U.S., he was reeling. He had to leave most of his assets and all his girlfriends behind. As he tries to rebuild, he leans into his name, doing interviews, speaking gigs, and even filming that bizarre video from the beginning of the episode.

How to uninstall McAfee Antivirus Software. Eventually, he meets Kyle Sandler, the founder of a tech incubator in Opelika, Alabama. Sarah, do you remember our episode about Kyle? Yes, I do remember Kyle. He was the employee of T-Mobile who, like, started doing tech review videos and then lied saying he was one of Google's first employees and just kept scamming through pretending to be like a huge tech guy.

Yeah, exactly matches John's style of loser energy. John and Kyle team up and John starts working with Kyle's startup. But he's looking for something bigger and more relevant. So one day, when Kyle jokes that John could run for president, John doesn't laugh at off. Sarah, you have to remember, this was 2015. You could not throw a rock without hitting an out-of-left-field president. candidate. Remember Gary Johnson and Jill Stein? Not to mention Donald Trump riding down a golden

escalator into all of our lives seemingly forever. There was a, let's call it, electoral permissiveness in the air. So John thought, ah, why the hell not? So in September 2015, John announces that he's running as a libertarian and rents out the Hustler Club so his Acolytes can meet their mysterious, infamous hero. To me, I feel like John does these things to distract and get attention and to get more followers and to make it seem like he's someone who's so special and can guide people. It's truly just for his ego and these people are donating money to him. It just doesn't make any sense.

He's playing pretend. Yeah, I mean, it's a stunt. And not only do libertarians seem unbothered by John's checkered. past, they're actually drawn to his devil-may-care attitude. John is polished, engaging in charismatic in the libertarian primary debates. He's getting support from actual voters, even though for John and Kyle, this is explicitly a money grab. And grab they do.

Kyle later tells Bloomberg that the campaign was raising money illegally right from the jump. John also capitalizes on this moment by inking business deals, a struggling company called MGT investors brings John on a CEO, and their stock quickly skyrockets from a quarter to more than $5 a share. But the surge catches the attention of the SEC, which sends MGT a subpoena. For John, the presidential run has delivered beyond his wildest dreams. He's back in the spotlight where he feels he belongs. However, in John McAfee's world, peace rarely lasts long, because every reinvention comes with a cost, and this one is no different.

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Robert King steps onto a yacht in Miami. He's careful to maintain his balance because he's carrying precious cargo, his video camera. He's here to pick up the documentary he never finished, tracking John McAfee on the run. After returning from Belize in 2012, Robert resigned from Vice and retreated to a a quieter life on his farm in Tennessee.

But he never lost track of John, whose face is now everywhere, because John is in deep shit. Even before John left MGT Capital in 2018, he was already plotting his next move. In late 2017, he started going on Twitter and loudly endorsing certain cryptocurrencies. Behind the scenes, though, there's a catch. John is often being paid to promote these tokens without disclosing it, and because his name still carries weight, one tweet from John is enough to send the value of a crypto surging, at least long enough for insiders, including John, to sell at a profit. But in the fall of 2018, shit started to hit the fan for John, all at once.

MGT Capital was charged with running a pump and dump scheme. Though John wasn't personally charged, his fingerprints were all over the company that was. And then a Florida court found John liable for the wrongful death of his former neighbor in Belize, the man who was found shot in the back of the head in 2012. On top of all that, the IRS is closing in on John for tax fraud. So John is feeling the heat. But thankfully, he has a plan. Go on the run again.

Here's what John posted on his YouTube page in January 2019. I have not paid taxes in 10 years. I will never. ever pay taxes again. Neither should you, neither should anybody in America, if I have to run forever, they will not ever get a penny for me. Okay, first of all, I just want to say I hate his voice in the way he speaks. It is terrible. It's like Batman. It's like bad Batman. It's insane. It's so annoying. On the one hand, you should pay your taxes, but on the other hand, I mean, he's just saying what every rich person

And it isn't saying out loud. Yeah. Or some of them are saying it in fact. Yeah, exactly. Or saying it, you know, different. He's not couching it in any, you know, anything else there. Yeah. Yeah.

Robert has a bit of a soft spot for John. They're both country boys who were raised by alcoholics and found success in unconventional lives. And Robert loves a good story, which John always provides. But the man Robert encounters is very different from the John he first met in Belize. John is now in his mid-70s with a belly, roomy eyes, and a hacking cough. He's still sharp, but he seems worn down, and he's often drunk and high. Robert joins John and John's latest wife, Janice, on John's yacht, along with six of John's security guards, a handful of dogs, and a bunch of automatic weapons.

They set sail, and the days stretch into weeks, and then months on the open sea. Though the boat may be fabulous, it's crowded. The dogs roam the boat freely, shitting everywhere. The water runs out, the alcohol does not. And John spends hours online, and he's still taking drugs and falling into bouts of paranoia. Gradually, paranoia grips everyone on board. John starts talking about people hiding in the bowels of the boat and shooting guns on board without warning.

Even though Robert spent most of his life in his life, war zones, he's scared. He later says that the security guards would fall asleep with their guns pointed where trouble was, John's room. I know Robert is like a real journalist who's very dedicated to his work, but this is so hell-like that I would just give up. I'd be like, you know what? Someone else can do it. Being on a boat with these people, getting probably seasick, dog shit everywhere, no water, John there. I couldn't have. imagine a worse situation. Yeah, literally not enough money in the world. Well, one day, John threatens to shoot Robert, and Robert takes it seriously. He packs his bags and heads straight for

the airport. Robert is done with the story and thankful to be leaving it alive. John's becoming too intense, even for the people looking to profit off of his eccentricities. But this third act is best defined by that old adage, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean. mean they're not after you. It's October 2019, a few months after Robert excused himself from the USS McAfee. John walks on stage to a round of applause. He's wearing a suit and he's clean-shaven and alert. He's speaking at a conference in Barcelona celebrating blockchain, the technology behind

cryptocurrency. It wasn't a smooth path to get here from his time at sea. After trying to dock in the Dominican Republic, John was arrested on suspicion of a legally importing weapons. He used his British passport to get himself and Janice extradited to the UK. Now, he settled in the Catalonia region of Spain in an abandoned hotel that's been turned into a crypto mine. And somehow, he's still a star. The crypto world can't get enough of him. But as time passes, the instability creeps back in. John mostly spends his days online tweeting about crypto, raging against COVID restrictions

and posting pictures of himself, including one of him peeing in the parking lot of a McDonald's. John still insists that drug cartels are after him. At one point, he gets a tattoo in his bicep, and Sarah, I'm going to do my best to describe it, that reads dollar sign W-H-A-C-K-D, so whacked, I think. And that dollar sign in the tattoo is there

because whacked is also a crypto coin. He shares a picture of the tattoo in a post on Twitter. Maybe you can read the post. Oh, Lord. He writes, Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect,

we're coming for you, McAfee. I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whacked. So his insurance to prove that he didn't kill himself if he gets murdered is to have a, a tattoo on his bicep that says whacked. Yeah, it's legally binding.

It's basically a contract. I don't even have words at this point. There's only so many ways you can call someone crazy. But this is just wild. Yeah, it is. Well, in June 2020, John is finally indicted for tax evasion. And then, in October, the SEC files a lawsuit against him for promoting crypto without disclosing that he was being paid to do so.

That same month, John tweets, know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine. Later that day, John is arrested at the Barcelona airport. The tax charges against him in the U.S. have triggered an international warrant. John's held in a Spanish prison without bail, and at a hearing before a Spanish court in June 2021, he explains that he believes the IRS is corrupt. He pleads through a translator saying that if he's sent back,

he'll definitely die in prison. but the court rejects his argument. Hours later, John is found hanging in his prison cell. Spanish authorities rule his death a suicide. Janice later tweets the note that Spanish authorities claim to have found in his cell. I am a phantom parasite. I want to control my future, which does not exist. As with everything with John McAfee,

the story is somehow more complex and confusing than it appears on the surface. After dying by suicide in prison, something he explicitly told his followers not to believe, John's body was held by Spanish authorities for more than a year. Some members of John's family say they've been swarmed with alerts that he's been spotted in Texas. Sam, his girlfriend from Belize, claims that she got a call from John asking her to run away with him. John lived an outlandish life with a tenuous connection to the truth. It's hard to know what was real and what was a dream. drug-induced hallucination, and whether he was really at risk from underworld threats,

or if he finally came to terms with actual consequences. But in the end, the one threat he could never outrun was himself. Oh, well, that was upsetting. It's just one of those tip-to-tale disgusting stories of a disgusting person who, like, I have zero empathy for, I just don't feel anything but contempt, really. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the right way to look at it. I guess my big question is how much of this story do you believe? Do you think he killed himself? Do you think he's dead? I feel like we live in an age where there are so many conspiracy theories that kind of turn out to be true in some cases, especially with the rich and famous and connected. And I'm curious what you think about all of his talk of, I would never kill myself only for that to be the literal way he goes. Well, here's the thing. Like he lived such an insanely dangerous life. You know, he had no limit. I feel like he's also someone whose mind changes at the drop of a hat.

I don't know why the one thing anyone would believe of him would be like, hey, by the way, I'm never going to kill myself. Like, oh, I'm supposed to believe that because you said it once and you got a tattoo. Like, nothing matters to you. He lived such a dishonest life that the truth will never be transparent or easy to know. Yeah, I feel like some of these guys say that as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy because they want the chaos to continue after they're gone and because they know that they are actually going to be the custodians of their own deaths because they can't

let go of any control. I think the plan was always for him to kill himself, frankly, when the law got too close. He's just really lucky it took until his mid-70s. Like what a long life for such an awful person. I know, you know, it's funny because you think about someone like him who, forget like being morally awful, like just treated his own body like shit, put himself in dangerous situations, probably shouldn't have lived as long as he did medically, and still somehow lived into being a senior citizen. I know. I guess it's a testament for doing bath salts, frankly, because every time I hear about someone doing hella drugs, they live a really long, fulfilled life. Why am I so worried about my blood pressure.

I know. Maybe people like him exist in this way to show us like, hey, anything can happen to your body. And maybe you don't have total control over when you'll die if you're healthy. You know, people like him, throw me for a loop because I think everyone should have hated you and like he did everything wrong in life

and managed to succeed in his own way. I also feel like John is like Forrest Gump, but for evil institutions. He was just at the forefront of all. all of these different kinds of tech culture, like antivirus protection, these bro Silicon Valley rooms, vice shit,

cryptocurrency. Like, he just had his fingers and everything. And of course it ends with him running in one of the most contentious and upsetting presidential runs ever. Yeah, it just shows how much has happened in the last decade where this is hardly a blip on anyone's radar because, you know, Donald Trump ended up becoming president twice.

Yeah, right. He would have thrived in this era. I know. It almost feels like a real blessing that he's not because I don't want Secretary of Internet John McAfee, you know, running through the country, ripping copper wire out of my internet provider. Do you feel like you learned any horrible, horrible lessons today?

Yes. There was a part of the story where his crazy outdoor adventures and kind of having those escapes for outdoorsy people and stuff. And, like, I briefly kind of touch on this. But there's a part of me that would have been like, yeah, I'll go to my boss's weird-ass thing. Like, what a crazy experience that would be. And I do think I should think twice about free experiences. There is no such thing as a free yacht ride.

That's for sure. I mean, but you're also thinking, what does this rich person want for me? You know, like, what can I give this person? How can it not be free? But you are paying a price. And you're either going to get killed. or be broken in some way from witnessing this man live his life? I feel like I just can't get over that all of this came from those annoying pop-ups I used to get on my Dell

laptop when I was 15 that I won in a writing competition that was 7,000 pounds heavy. And every five minutes, I would get a McAfee antivirus alert and I would ignore it and think, I'm never going to have to think about that again. And here we are thinking about it. So much. Totally. I mean, I didn't even know this was a god. I thought it was just the name of an antivirus

for most of hearing about it. Also, again, was a time when, like, people didn't know tech bros by their names outside of, like, Bill Gates or whatever. Oh, what a time. What a blissful time to not know their names. People didn't know who was behind the technology. Yeah, I guess the thing about John was that

he should have been a nerd, but instead someone showed him how to use a gun. And we have to keep our nerds and freaks and geeks away from extreme sports, from guns, from boats, and above all, bath salts. No more bath salts. I think we can all agree on that. Yeah, I would say that. Yeah, that's a perfect note to end on.

Follow scamflincers on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to all episodes of Scamflincers ad free by joining Audible. From Audible originals, this is John McAfee, the antisocial virus for scamplencers. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at Scampfluencers ataudible.com. We use many sources in our research.

A few that were particularly helpful were, Fear made John McAfee rich. It also ruined him by Jamie Terabi and Matthew Bremner for Bloomberg Businessweek. And Bloomberg's Foundering the John McAfee's story. podcast series. What happened to John McAfee, the tech mogul who went on the run by Ben Michelle for the Sunday Times, the documentaries Gringo, The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, and Running with the Devil, the Wild World of John McAfee. John McAfee fled to Belize, but he couldn't escape himself by Joshua Davis for Wired, and Jeff Wise is reporting for

Outside Fast Company, Gizmodo, Psychology Today, and New York Magazine. Our senior producer, Sarah Enney, wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Olivia Briley is our story editor. Our senior producer is Ginny Bloom. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Fact-checking by Gabrielle Droulet.

Sound design by James Morkin. Additional audio assistance provided by Augustine Lynn. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frieson Sink. The executive producer for Audible is Jenny Lauer Beckman. The head of creative development at Audible is Kate Naven. The head of Audible Originals, Northeastern. America is Marshall Louis. The chief content officer is Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible originals LLC. Sound recording copyright 2026 by Audible originals LLC. I'm Leon Nefak, best known as the

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