10 things about Cinderford native John McAfee

John David McAfee was a British-American computer programmer and businessman. He lived in different countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Guatemala and Belize.

BIOGRAPHY

McAfee was an alumnus of Roanoke College in Salem. He was born on a U.S. Army base in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England, U.K. to an American father and a British mother and raised in Salem, Virginia, USA.

On September 18, 2020, McAfee turned 75. Here are 10 more things about him:

1. In 1960, his father fatally shot himself.
2. In 1967, he graduated from Roanoke College with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics.
3. In 2008, Roanoke College awarded him an honorary doctor of science degree.
4. From 1968 to 1970, he worked as a programmer in the Institute for Space Studies of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in New York City, New York, USA.
5. In 1987, he founded the software company McAfee Associates.
6. In 1994, he resigned from McAfee Associates.
7. In 2012, he was identified as a person of interest in connection to the murder of Gregory Viant Faull, his neighbor in Belize.
8. He unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Party nomination for U.S. president in 2016 and 2020.
9. In 2020, he was arrested in Spain.
10. In 2021, he took his own life.

TIMELINE

McAfee created the first commercial antivirus software of McAfee Associates. After leaving the company, he became its most vocal critic.

2010s

• In February 2010, he started QuorumEx, a company headquartered in Belize.
• On April 30, 2012, the Gang Suppression Unit of the Belize Police Department raided his property in Orange Walk Town, Belize.
• On November 11, 2012, Faull, an American expatriate, was found dead of a gunshot wound at Faull’s home on Ambergris Caye, the largest island in Belize. 
• On November 12, 2012, Belizean police started a search for him as a person of interest in connection to the murder of Faull, who was his neighbor. He fled Belize and went to Guatemala.
• On December 5, 2012, he was arrested for illegally entering Guatemala and was taken from his holding facility to a detention center in order to await deportation to Belize. 
• On December 12, 2012, he was released from detention and was deported to the U.S.
• His experiences in Belize were the subject of the documentary titled “Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee,” which premiered on Showtime Networks in September 2016.
• On November 14, 2018, the Circuit Court in Orlando, Florida, USA refused to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit against him for the murder of Faull in Belize.

2020s

• On October 3, 2020, he was arrested at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice in an airport in Barcelona, Spain when he was about to board a flight to Istanbul, Turkey with a British passport. He was booked into the Centro penitenciario Brians 1 in Barcelona.
• On June 23, 2021, he was found dead due to an apparent suicide by hanging in a prison cell in Barcelona shortly after Spain’s National Court approved his extradition to the U.S. to face criminal tax evasion charges.