John McAfee Found Dead in Prison Cell

John McAfee, an eccentric software pioneer who lived on the lam for many years, was found dead in a Spanish prison cell Wednesday evening.

According to a statement released by the Catalan justice department and obtained by Reuters, suicide is the most likely cause.

The news comes just hours after news emerged that McAfee would face extradition to the US after a Spanish High Court ruling.

McAfee was arrested at Barcelona's airport in October 2020 on tax evasion charges. A 10-count indictment filed in Tennessee accused him of evading taxes on millions of dollars in income.

McAfee was a veteran headline maker. In 2018, the eccentric millionaire claimed he was poisoned by "his enemies," according to a tweet.

He also became embroiled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission at the time, accusing them of endangering his life for promoting new cryptocurrencies.

He had also sometimes demonstrated a paranoid streak, posting in 2019 that unspecified "US officials" intended to kill him and make it look like a suicide.

"If I suicide myself, I didn't," he wrote at the time. "I was whackd. [sic]"

McAfee also was forced to run his second US presidential campaign in 2019 in exile to avoid being charged for tax fraud. He ran for the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States in both 2016 and 2020.

The entrepreneur most famously founded the software company McAfee Associates in 1987, which later became a successful commercial antivirus software.

He was 75 at the time of his death.

READ MORE: U.S. software mogul John McAfee dies by hanging in Spanish prison - lawyer says [Reuters]

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