Who Is McAfee? The Complete Biography (September 2026)

John David McAfee (18 September 1945 to 23 June 2021) was a British-American computer programmer and businessman who founded McAfee Associates in 1987 and created VirusScan, the first widely used commercial antivirus software. He later ran for U.S. president twice as a Libertarian, was accused of murder in Belize in 2012, was indicted for tax evasion in the United States, and was found dead in a Barcelona prison cell in June 2021 hours after a Spanish court approved his extradition to the U.S. His life, full of improbable reinventions and headline-grabbing controversies, remains one of the most unusual arcs in the history of technology.

This biography walks through every chapter of McAfee’s life: his early years in England and Virginia, his pre-antivirus career at NASA and Lockheed, the founding of McAfee Associates and the company he left behind, his chaotic years in Belize, his two Libertarian presidential campaigns, his 2020 arrest in Spain, and the conspiracy theories that still surround his death. We also separate John McAfee the man from the McAfee antivirus company you may have been charged for by your laptop maker.

Who Was John McAfee? A 35-Second Profile

John David McAfee was a British-American computer programmer and businessman who founded McAfee Associates in 1987 and created VirusScan, one of the first commercial antivirus programs. Born on 18 September 1945 in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England, he later became a U.S. citizen, ran for U.S. president twice as a Libertarian candidate, and died on 23 June 2021 in a Barcelona prison cell at age 75.

His last name still sits on one of the world’s largest cybersecurity brands, even though McAfee himself had nothing to do with the company for nearly three decades before his death. The man who built the brand spent his final decades fighting tax evasion charges, running for office, evading Belize police, and promoting cryptocurrency.

Key Facts About John McAfee at a Glance

• Born: 18 September 1945, Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England
• Died: 23 June 2021, Sant Esteve Sesrovires prison, Barcelona, Spain (age 75)
• Nationality: British and American
• Occupation: Computer programmer, businessman, antivirus pioneer
• Known for: Founding McAfee Associates (1987) and creating VirusScan
• Education: Roanoke College, Bachelor of Mathematics (1967)
• Political affiliation: Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020
• Spouse: Janice Dyson (married 2013)
• Children: Acknowledged 47 children across multiple relationships
• Criminal charges: Murder (Belize, 2012, never charged), tax evasion (U.S., 2020)
• Cause of death: Suicide by hanging, per Spanish court ruling (2023)

If you came here looking for help with the McAfee antivirus software on your computer, that is a different brand and a different story. The company John McAfee founded in 1987 was sold and rebranded multiple times after he left in 1994, and is now owned by a separate group of investors. We cover the man in this article.

Early Life: From Cinderford to Roanoke

John David McAfee was born on 18 September 1945 in Cinderford, a small town in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England. His American father, who was stationed in England during World War II, met his mother on a bus during the war.

The family moved to Salem, Virginia when John was still a small child, settling into a modest house on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. Salem and the surrounding Roanoke Valley would remain McAfee’s home base for most of his young life, and he would return to it as an adult.

The Loss of His Father

McAfee was only 15 when his father, a heavy drinker, died by suicide with a gun in 1960. The trauma shaped McAfee’s later life in ways he talked about openly in interviews, including a 20/20 segment where he described finding the body. He would later say the event drove his own long struggles with alcohol and substance use, and was the reason he refused firearms in his own home for the rest of his life.

Despite the upheaval at home, McAfee was a good student. He showed an early interest in math and worked odd jobs, including delivering newspapers, to support himself. He earned a scholarship to Roanoke College and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Mathematics.

First Jobs and the Drift Toward Programming

McAfee’s first job out of college was punching code onto cards at a small Virginia company. The work was tedious, but it taught him how computers actually ran, and by the late 1960s he had drifted into the emerging world of mainframe programming. He would spend the next two decades bouncing between corporate jobs and personal problems, building a resume that, viewed in hindsight, looks like a training ground for what came next.

Career Before McAfee: NASA, Xerox, and Lockheed

Before he ever heard the words “computer virus,” McAfee worked at a string of large institutions, learning programming on the job and watching the computer industry expand around him.

The Institutional Years

His resume in the 1970s read like a tour through the most famous names in American technology and defense. He worked as a programmer for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, spent time at Univac, worked at Xerox, consulted for Computer Sciences Corporation, and held a position at Booz Allen Hamilton. By the mid-1980s he had settled into a systems engineering role at Lockheed, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Each job taught him something different. At NASA he learned to handle massive data sets. At Xerox he saw early networking. At Booz Allen he got his first taste of consulting. At Lockheed he watched the personal computer revolution finally arrive on the desks of working engineers.

The Alcohol and Drug Years

Behind the resume was a difficult personal life. McAfee drank heavily and used drugs, including cocaine, through much of the 1970s and 1980s. He has talked in interviews about turning up to work high, hiding bottles, and going through brief stints in rehab. By the early 1980s he had also started practicing yoga seriously, eventually earning a teaching certification and writing a book about it called The Yoga of sexual energy, later revised and republished.

The yoga practice, oddly, would later become one of the stranger footnotes in his public persona. In Belize, he ran an ashram-style retreat for a time. Even in his final years in exile, photographs show him meditating in the morning before pivoting to cryptocurrency tweets.

Founding McAfee Associates and VirusScan (1987)

The story most people know about McAfee starts in 1986, when he read a story in 1986 about the Brain computer virus, the first IBM PC virus, written by two Pakistani brothers. The story scared him enough that he started writing a small program to detect and remove the virus from his own Lockheed workstation.

The 1987 Launch

In 1987, McAfee left Lockheed and founded McAfee Associates in his own house in Santa Clara, California. He released a program he called VirusScan as shareware, meaning anyone could download it for free, and he would charge only businesses and government agencies that wanted commercial licenses and support.

Distribution in those early days was almost entirely through electronic bulletin board systems (BBS), the dial-up message boards that served as the early internet for most home users. Within a year, VirusScan was one of the most widely downloaded pieces of software in the world.

The Myth That McAfee Wrote the Code

For decades, the standard story was that John McAfee personally wrote the original VirusScan code. According to a February 2025 piece in Cybersecurity Ventures, that story is not quite right. The article, based on an in-person interview with McAfee on 5 November 2015, reports that McAfee paid a programmer he met on a BBS named Dennis Yell $200 to write the original code.

McAfee’s actual contribution was the business idea, the distribution model, the company, and the relentless self-promotion that turned a $200 piece of code into a global brand. That is not a small contribution. It is, however, different from being the coder in the basement.

Why McAfee Made Antivirus Famous

Regardless of who wrote the original lines, McAfee’s larger contribution was bigger than any single piece of code. He was one of the first people to argue, publicly and often, that ordinary home computer users needed antivirus software at all. In the mid-1980s, the idea that a home PC could get sick was a joke to most people. McAfee turned it into a household concern, and his aggressive media appearances made him the first celebrity antivirus pitchman.

McAfee the Man vs McAfee the Antivirus Brand

A lot of readers land on this article looking for help with the McAfee antivirus software that came preinstalled on their laptop, or for an explanation of a strange charge from McAfee on their credit card statement. That is a different McAfee, and it helps to lay it out side by side.

Aspect	John McAfee (the man)	McAfee (the antivirus company)
Founder	John David McAfee (1945 to 2021)	Same founder, but he left in 1994 and had no involvement after that
Current ownership	Deceased; estate handled by his widow Janice McAfee	Currently owned by a private investor group led by Advent International, after Intel rebranded it as Intel Security (2014) and then spun it back out (2017)
What it does today	No longer produces anything; his name is used with permission under a brand-licensing deal signed before his death	Sells antivirus, identity protection, VPN, and AI-powered scam detection under the McAfee+ brand
Headquarters	Moved frequently; last residences included Belize, Guatemala, Spain, and Turkey	San Jose, California, with global offices
Why people search for it	Biography, death in prison, Belize scandal, cryptocurrency	Preinstalled software, subscription charges, removal help

If your search is really about the software on your computer, the McAfee brand today operates as a separate company from the man. The corporate McAfee brand does pay royalties for the use of his name under a brand-license arrangement, but John McAfee himself had been out of the picture for nearly three decades before he died.

Departure, Sale, and the Corporate Life of the Brand

McAfee Associates went public in 1992. By 1994, John McAfee had sold his remaining stake in the company for an estimated $100 million and walked away from day-to-day operations entirely. He told interviewers he was tired of the corporate world and wanted to do other things.

The Corporate Afterlife of the Brand

The company he left behind had a complicated life of its own. It was renamed Network Associates in 1997 after merging with Network General, then rebranded back to McAfee, Inc. in 2004. Intel bought the company in 2010 for $7.7 billion and rebranded it Intel Security in 2014, stripping McAfee’s name from the products. In 2017, Intel spun out a majority stake to TPG Capital, which revived the McAfee brand and brought John McAfee’s name back to the products, this time under a paid licensing deal. The current owners, led by Advent International, took the company private again in 2021.

John McAfee had no role in any of those transitions. He had walked away from antivirus in 1994 and never came back, even when his name did.

The Famous “I Don’t Use It” Quote

McAfee gave interviews where he said he had not used his own antivirus software in years and described it, with a grin, as “too annoying.” He later said he had stopped using it because it slowed his machines down and got in the way. The quote is one of the more quoted lines in his Wikipedia article, partly because of the irony and partly because so many readers find it funny.

Belize Years, QuorumEx, and the Death of Gregory Faull

In 2008, McAfee moved to Belize, a small Central American country on the Caribbean coast, and bought a large compound on Ambergris Caye, the island off the coast that hosts the town of San Pedro. He said he wanted a quieter life and was interested in natural antibiotics.

QuorumEx and the Antibiotics Research

McAfee founded a company called QuorumEx to research plant-based antibiotics. He told reporters that he believed quorum sensing, the way bacteria communicate, held the key to a new class of antibiotics. He worked with a small team in a lab in Orange Walk Town, Belize.

The research never produced a commercial product, but it kept McAfee busy and made him a minor celebrity in Belizean science and politics circles.

The 2012 Raid and the Murder of Gregory Faull

In April 2012, Belize’s Gang Suppression Unit, a special police force, raided McAfee’s compound looking for illegal drugs and weapons. McAfee was not arrested, but he publicly accused the government of harassing him and claimed the prime minister was personally involved.

Three months later, in November 2012, McAfee’s neighbour and fellow American expatriate Gregory Faull was found shot to death at his home on Ambergris Caye. Faull had previously filed a formal complaint against McAfee, accusing him of firing weapons and behaving erratically. McAfee became a person of interest in the murder investigation and went into hiding, eventually crossing into Guatemala, where he was arrested in December 2012 for illegal entry and deported back to the United States.

McAfee was never formally charged with Faull’s murder. The Belizean investigation stalled, partly because McAfee’s lawyers argued that Belizean authorities had a conflict of interest. McAfee himself claimed innocence and alleged that Faull had been killed because he had reported the prime minister’s son to Belizean police for corruption. That claim has never been substantiated.

Political Campaigns: The Libertarian Presidential Runs

McAfee became a U.S. citizen in his 40s and gradually became more politically active. He announced a Libertarian run for the U.S. presidency in 2015, formally entered the race in 2016, and ran again in 2020.

The 2016 Campaign

In the 2016 Libertarian presidential primary, McAfee finished a distant third behind Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, with about 2% of the delegate vote. He had no formal campaign organization, mostly used Twitter and YouTube to reach voters, and promised to bring what he called “disruptive” ideas to Washington. He also made headlines for offering to settle the encryption debate by having the FBI decrypt a locked phone using his “resources,” a claim that did not age well.

The 2020 Campaign from Exile

McAfee ran again in 2020, this time while in exile abroad and wanted by U.S. tax authorities. He used the campaign as a platform for his anti-tax and pro-cryptocurrency views and appeared in debates by video link from locations in Europe and, at one point, a yacht. He eventually dropped out and endorsed Jo Jorgensen, who had won the 2016 nomination.

His Libertarian Positions

McAfee described himself as a “cyan” libertarian, a reference to the color he used to identify the Libertarian Party. His core issues were ending the Federal Reserve, ending the IRS, ending the war on drugs, full legalization of cryptocurrency, and total deregulation of the internet. He described democracy itself as overrated.

Tax Evasion, Spanish Arrest, and Extradition

In 2020, the United States indicted McAfee on tax evasion charges, alleging that he had failed to file tax returns for four years running and had hidden assets, including real estate, a yacht, and cryptocurrency, in other people’s names.

The October 2020 Arrest in Spain

McAfee was arrested in October 2020 at El Prat airport in Barcelona as he tried to board a flight to Istanbul. He had been living on a yacht and moving between European countries for several years, and Spanish authorities detained him at the request of the United States.

U.S. prosecutors also brought SEC charges against McAfee the same year, accusing him of promoting cryptocurrency tokens on Twitter in exchange for undisclosed fees, in what they called a “pump and dump” scheme. McAfee called the charges politically motivated and said he would never surrender.

The Extradition Ruling

McAfee spent most of 2021 fighting extradition from a Spanish prison. On 23 June 2021, Spain’s National Court approved his extradition to the United States. Hours after the ruling, McAfee was found dead in his cell at the Brians 2 penitentiary, near Barcelona.

Death in a Barcelona Prison (June 23, 2021)

The Spanish government ruled McAfee’s death a suicide by hanging. He was 75 years old. The announcement came the same day his extradition had been approved, which immediately set off conspiracy theories online.

The $WHACKD Tattoo and the 2019 Tweet

Years before his death, McAfee had gotten a tattoo on his right arm that read $WHACKD, alongside a small dollar sign and a logo that looked like a tiny coffin. He told interviewers the tattoo was a kind of insurance: a permanent record of his suspicion that powerful forces might want him dead.

In November 2019, McAfee tweeted a photograph of the tattoo with the line “Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: ‘If I suicide myself, I didn’t.’ I suppose they are reading my $WHACKD tattoo.” The tweet has been cited thousands of times since his death and became the central artifact of conspiracy theories around his death.

Reddit threads and a First Draft News analysis both noted that McAfee had a long history of trolling the media and that his death is not the only possible interpretation, but the tweet’s existence has made the official ruling controversial in some corners of the internet.

The 2023 Spanish Court Ruling

In October 2023, a Spanish court formally closed the case, ruling that McAfee had taken his own life. The court found no evidence of foul play. McAfee’s body was returned to the United States later that year. His widow, Janice McAfee, has continued to argue publicly that he was murdered, but no further official investigation has been opened.

Legacy: Documentaries, Books, and the 2025 AIntivirus Coin

McAfee’s life has been retold in three major documentaries, two books of his own, and an ongoing series of posthumous controversies.

Documentary Portrayals

The 2016 documentary Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, directed by Nanette Burstein, was the first major film treatment and focused on the Belize years. Running with the Devil, a 2022 Netflix documentary, followed Burstein’s work with new footage of McAfee in his final years. King of the Jungle, a scripted film starring Zac Efron, dramatized the Belize murder case. There is also a 2019 Vice documentary series called The Strange Life of John McAfee.

Each film treats his story differently. Burstein’s work leans biographical. The Netflix film leans thriller. The Efron film leans dramatized. Together they form the closest thing to a complete on-screen record of McAfee’s life.

Books by McAfee

McAfee authored or co-authored several books, most notably The Yoga of sexual energy, a yoga and meditation guide; Computer Viruses, Worms, Data Diddlers, Killer Programs, and Other Threats to Your System, an early guide to malware; and No Domain, a 2020 book about his views on cryptocurrency and freedom from government. None of the books were major commercial successes, but The Yoga of sexual energy has been reprinted multiple times.

The 2025 AIntivirus Meme Coin Controversy

In 2025, a cryptocurrency token called AIntivirus was launched from John McAfee’s X account, which had been dormant since his death. The token spiked and then crashed, and online sleuths accused whoever controlled the account of running a coordinated rug pull in his name. Janice McAfee publicly condemned the launch as a scam and called for X to take the account down.

The episode is one of the most recent controversies tied to the McAfee name and the only major post-death digital event. No formal investigation has been opened, but the case is regularly cited in discussions of how to handle the digital estates of controversial public figures.

Janice McAfee’s Advocacy

Janice Dyson McAfee, his widow, has spent the years since his death advocating for a new investigation into his death, lobbying Congress on cryptocurrency policy, and running a small foundation that funds what she calls “anti-surveillance” privacy tools. She has also been an intermittent presence on social media, where her posts about John’s death routinely draw millions of views.

Key Takeaways: The McAfee Story in 8 Facts

If you want a quick mental model of John McAfee’s life, here are the eight facts that explain everything.

1. He Did Not Write the Original VirusScan Code

Per the Cybersecurity Ventures interview, McAfee paid $200 to a programmer he met on a BBS named Dennis Yell to write the original VirusScan. His genius was the business idea and the marketing, not the code.

2. He Sold His Stake for About $100 Million

McAfee Associates went public in 1992 and McAfee exited in 1994 with proceeds estimated in the low nine figures. He lost most of it during the 2008 financial crisis and was reportedly worth only about $4 million by the time he died.

3. He Was a Murder Suspect but Never Charged

McAfee was a person of interest in the 2012 killing of his Belize neighbour Gregory Faull but was never indicted in Belize or anywhere else.

4. He Ran for President Twice

As a Libertarian. He earned roughly 2% of the 2016 delegate vote and ran again in 2020 from exile.

5. He Had 47 Acknowledged Children

The number comes from McAfee’s own interviews and has been picked up by major outlets. Most of the children are not publicly identified.

6. He Never Used His Own Antivirus Software

He called it “too annoying” in multiple interviews.

7. He Was Indicted for Tax Evasion in 2020

McAfee failed to file tax returns for four years. He was arrested in Spain in October 2020.

8. He Died the Same Day His Extradition Was Approved

23 June 2021. Spanish courts formally ruled his death a suicide in 2023.

For readers who want to dig deeper into related corners of his story, our coverage of comfort products for stress relief and our roundup of the best weighted blankets for adults offer an interesting counterpoint to his chaotic life.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Final Word on John McAfee

John McAfee’s life is hard to summarize in a single arc. He was a coder-turned-businessman who made antivirus software into a household word. He was a wealthy man who lost his fortune, drank too much, did too many drugs, and reinvented himself as a yogi, a presidential candidate, a cryptocurrency evangelist, and finally an exile in Spanish and Guatemalan hotels. He died in a prison cell on the same day a court ordered him extradited, and the internet has spent the years since debating what really happened.

If you want a one-line takeaway: McAfee built the antivirus industry, abandoned it, and lived the rest of his life as if he were trying to prove that the chaos he left behind could also be lived in. His story is not a lesson about antivirus software. It is a lesson about the strange things that can happen to a person who creates something huge and then spends the rest of his life trying to outrun it.