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Subscribe to RSSFounder of McAfee security software John McAfee emerged from hiding in Guatemala where he plans to seek asylum. McAfee claims he is being persecuted by police in Belize where he is considered a person of interest in the killing of another American.
GUATEMALA CITY – Software guru John McAfee, who is fighting deportation to Belize, was rushed to the hospital in Guatemala on Thursday after his lawyer said he suffered two mild heart attacks.
McAfee was carried out on a stretcher from an immigration service cottage where he was detained after crossing illegally into Guatemala from neighboring Belize.
Police in Belize want to question McAfee in connection with his neighbor's murder.
Earlier a Guatemala official said the government was going to try to send McAfee back to Belize.
McAfee was posting on his blog whoismcafee.com when he suffered the heart attacks, said the lawyer, Telesforo Guerra. "I don't think a heart attack prevents one from using one's blog,'' he added.
Guerra's assistant, Karla Paz, said she had found McAfee lying on the ground, unable to move his body or speak.
McAfee -- famous for the anti-virus software that still bears his name -- crossed into Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend to evade authorities in Belize, who want to quiz him as "a person of interest" about the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull.
"He entered the country illegally and we are going to seek his expulsion for this crime," Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said.
McAfee, 67, was detained by Guatemalan police and a member of Interpol at the upscale Intercontinental hotel in Guatemala City.
Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas said the entrepreneur would be expelled to Belize.
Erratic behavior
One of Silicon Valley's first entrepreneurs to build an Internet fortune, McAfee made millions of dollars through antivirus software.
McAfee's behavior has been increasingly erratic in recent years but there is no international arrest warrant for him. Police in Belize say he is not a prime suspect.
Fernando Lucero, spokesman for Guatemala's immigration department, said immediate deportation had been ruled out.
Guerra was seeking an injunction to have him released and McAfee said on his blog that he would not now be returned to the Belize border until a higher judge reviewed the case.
John McAfee, creator of an anti-virus software and resident of Belize, is hiding from authorities who want to charge him for the shooting death of his neighbor. McAfee, who has a reputation for being bizarre, said, "I think that eccentricity in some people makes for a more interesting world but eccentricity does not make a murderer." NBC's Michelle Franzen reports.
Reporter's iPhone photo reveals John McAfee's location
McAfee was taken to a residence belonging to the immigration department guarded by a small group of police.
He had been seeking political asylum in Guatemala, which has been embroiled in a long-running territorial dispute with Belize.
Residents and neighbors on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived in Belize for about four years, say he is eccentric, impulsive, volatile and at times unstable, citing his love of guns and young women.
'Wild country'
McAfee has said he believes authorities in Belize will kill him if he turns himself in for questioning. Belize's prime minister has denied this and called him paranoid and "bonkers."
"It's a wild, wild country," McAfee told Reuters in an interview in his hotel room just hours before his detention.
Software guru John McAfee held in Guatemala
"Everyone sees one part of Belize," he said. "They think it's a wonderful, peaceful, lovely place, blue waters, so McAfee has got to be crazy. Maybe I am crazy. If I were, I wouldn't know."
In Belize, he was often seen with armed bodyguards dressed in camouflage, pistols tucked into his belt. McAfee's slain neighbor had complained about the loud barking of dogs that guarded his exclusive beachside compound.
His run-in with authorities in Belize is a world away from a successful life in the United States, where the former Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in the late 1980s. McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.
There was already a case against McAfee in Belize for possession of illegal firearms, and police had previously raided his property on suspicion he was running a lab to make illegal synthetic narcotics.
He says he has not taken drugs since 1983.
"(Before then) I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the day, I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the planet," McAfee said. "Then I finally went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it."
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Leave a Comment:
Life is about choices. He chose to live in Belize and live the lifestyle he has become accustom to. Let him live by their rules and regulations. Don't ask for help from the United States either. He can afford it, let him hire a Lawyer. He made his bed so let him sleep in it,
Illegal? You mean other countries don't let you just walk across their borders??? We need to get our liberal mafia down their to Guatamale and straighten them out. People should be able to migrate where and when they want!!!
This is racisms!!! Where's Jessie and Al... Oh McAfee is white... I forgot!!!
Immigration HELPS the USA, except for the semi-literate scum like DAWG POUND who could never get a decent job or a girlfriend in his life, and doesn't like any further competition. Go out and pick some apples if you don't like immigrants you loser, or better yet, stop eating all immigrant-supported foods and stop shopping at every immigrant-hiring establishment and you will SOON DIE OF STARVATION! GOOD RIDDANCE!
Let me guess Bruce---your last name is Martinez.
I agree. I have no sympathies for anyone who moves to a third world country to avoid paying taxes in America. If he wants to come back here or get any help from the US whatsoever make him pay all the taxes he would have owed.
McAfee is a dick. I did work for him back in the early 90's on a house he built in Colorado to hide from all the people that wanted to kill him then. By the time they were done building his house in Colorado, everyone that worked on it wanted to kill him too. I hope he ends up in a 3 world prison as someones gringo biatch.
Obviously I've done better with my education and job skills than you, my friend. When you resort to name calling it becomes apparent that you have nothing intelligible to offer to the conversation.
Legal immigration is always welcomed in the US and most industrialized nations around the world! Illegal immigration in most countries including little ole Guatemala is, well ... ILLEGAL!!!!
Besides, I'd rather pay a little more for my fruit to know that the people in the fields picking it are paid fairly and have the opportunity to pay their fair share of taxes like Social Security and Medicaid.
It is no mystery that both Social Security and Medicaid are going broke. In the future without people paying in (like illegals), the system will completely falter. Why should everyone else born here and legally immigrate here have to pay in but apple pickers or landscapers shouldn't??? From the time I was 15 years old I began paying into Social Security. Thank goodness I'll never need it but it was there and paid for by me if I had failed financially in life.
Quite honestly, I've about had it with the McAfee story. I bought and read the mini-e-book put out by the WIRED reporter who hung out with him for a few days in Belize. I believe it's called "John McAfee's Last Stand". I also heard the interview he did with Joe Rogan in his podcast.
All indications are that he has lost his marbles. He is suffering from some heavy duty paranoid schizophrenia - either that or all of the drugs he did in his youth (coke and LSD) have completely fried his brain. I also wouldn't be surprised if he was producing meth or bath salts and was sampling his own product. He might actually be guilty of killing that other dude as well.
What you claim is possible.
And I pity him; he lives in fear.
It's also possible he was actually having psychosomatic panic attacks or anxiety attacks that he intentionally made it a point to histrionically exaggerate his fears and demonstrate his mental suffering in front of witnesses; they can be made to believe he was experiencing (or acting out, or plausibly simulating), mild cardiac seizures.
All the better to get himself out of that stuffy, clastrophobic, uncomfortable, cold jail cell, eh?
From what I've seen about him, he's pretty paranoid for his life, hence all the excessive security measures and firearms he packs in a peaceful country. He's maintained this destructive imagery in his mind; thus, he's violently afraid of experiencing personal suffering, pain and death from the hands of strangers. Who might his deadly enemy? It might be him, her, that guy looking at me funny, that guy wearing a cap and sunglasses, or the killer might even be you, or your 94-year-old great-grandmother hobbling about in a walker.
He's neurotic out of being so afraid of being forced to reveal all his hidden, shameful, closeted private secrets -- oh, the guilt, the shame, if anyone even knew! -- to any man (or men) he imagines that there's a one-in-a-million chance "they" might want to suddenly drag him out of his island house in the middle of the night, and torture him to death, to get him to reveal what makes him feel so guilty, so blamed, so blameless and ever the victim of the world, and so much in denial.
And what did he conspire or secretly do, to get himself to believe that he's going to reap the vengeance of another he wronged, one fine day when he least expects it?
So why not create a cover story like the police are out to get you and that's why you ran far away, looking for a safe place to hide. Well, he created his own self-fulfilling prophesy; he feared the police are out to get him ...and well, ...they got him.
-------------------------------------
Remember when you ran away and I got on my knees and begged you not to
leave because I'd go berserk??
Well...
You left me anyhow and then the days got worse and worse and now you see
I've gone completely out of my mind..
And..
They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
To the funny farm. Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be
happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!!!
You thought it was a joke and so you laughed, you laughed when I had said
that loosing you would make me flip my lid..
RIGHT???
I know you laughed, I heard you laugh, you laughed you laughed and
laughed and then you left, but now you know I'm utterly mad...
And..
They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa,
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa.
To the happy home. With trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket
weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!
I cooked your food, I cleaned your house, and this is how you pay me back
for all my kind unselfish loving deeds..
Huh??
Well you just wait, they'll find you yet and when they do they'll put you
in the ASPCA, you mangy mutt!!!
And...
They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa.
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa.
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy
to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming
to take me away, ha-haaa!!! To the happy home, with trees and flowers
and chirping birds and basket
weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haa!!!
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time... (fade out)
-- "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa" from "Dr. Demento's Delights"
So much for the girls uncle, the attorney general, helping out. I wonder if he's a figment of this guy's imagination.
Talk about a fall from grace!!!
Apparently, Latin America doesn't like it when a white person enters one of their countries illegally but when the US tries to deport their unemployed rats who sneak into our country illegally, these crybabies complain about their civil rights being violated. Heck, with a BILLIONAIRE wanting to enter one of your countries, why are you passing up an opportunity to get some of that money. MONEY that could be used to give latinos JOBS and decent housing and food, and you want to deport a BILLIONAIRE! Having a Billionaire seek political asylum in your country is like hitting the lottery man!
Yeah I don't believe he is worth anywhere near a billion.
He never was a billionaire - he sold his company more than a decade ago for a few hundred million and reportedly only has a fraction of that left. But please, go ahead and prove how ignorant one must be to act like immigration is hurting them personally. The only thing hurting bigots like scottestinson is the fact they have a black President. Why don't you grow up, finish high school, and then learn how all immigration is helping the USA in a modern economy. Or you can keep spewing your ignorant, fearful, small-minded hatred and you will influence no one, and change nothing. The world looks less and less like you because the human race is evolving, leaving the dregs to die out. BYE BYE!
I agree. fried brain from drugs. he lives in his head. 67 years old, 20 years old girlfriend? he's quite out there. about 3 sheets in the wind.
You're truly exaggerating to clarify I'm sure.
Dude has lost his cookies. Pardon the pun.
can this guy just hurry up and die already? tired of reading about this loser.
This should go VIRAL
How can someone without a heart have two heart attacks? Probably faking it, as he refuses to believe that life as he knew it is over forever. BYE BYE!
Panic attacks. the reality of the reality is an awakening.
How convenient.
drugs will tear you up..............
bullshlt...I don't believe a word of it.
LEGALIZE DRUGS .... I hope every moron who wants to do drugs will get drugs and kill themselves quickly... it's called evolution !
The dumbasses die
Coke is a bisch. Does things like this.
It says "2 heart attacks"? No one cared to take him to the hospital after the first one? Sounds like BS to me. Perhaps he should be committed for his paranoid schizophrenia? If he has nothing to hide, surrender yourself for questioning, clear your name, and move on. I think he is enjoying the free publicity that being an idiot on the run is giving him in the news. Quit giving the fool the attention.
I think theres way more to this story than is being told. C'mon media DIG.
McAfee first broke the story to Alex Jones and explains everything in detail, and sounds very stable both emotionally and psychologically. So far, I have not seen these details anywhere in media. In fact, all I'm seeing is him being made out to be the bad guy. I take no side, but, damn.
Please find this interview with Alex Jones on YouTube.
I hope Norton doesn't find him.
This story has Hollywood written all over it.
The guy is a narcissistic creep.
Die already.
If there isn't already a made-for-TV movie in the works, I'm going to produce it myself. Could this story get any stranger? Sheesh.
These heart attacks seemed faked. He laid down and stayed silent appearing unconscious yet he would sit up if he had something to say....sort of like Holly bo-bo. He seems demented to me. Manipulations......he is trying to confuse enough people while he will try to escape.
This guy is such a crank and loser. He needs to be gone....