Part One: John McAfee Is Not Funny Anymore

I love them what scrambled in my age? Thank you? No, they would not know, they would not, but we lost that demographic, so lazy, you are a scam got Us has already stated you were on our episode about Karl may Sh Hitler's favorite author, scammer. Today we're talking about another scammer, and in fact, we're talking about a scammer who fooled me for a little while. So yeah, this is gonna good. So he's good. I don't know if you i'd say he's good, But like you know, everybody's

got something they're vulnerable to from a scammer. And I'm gonna find out what your vulnerability. Yeah, I've got a vulnerability to the scam. This guy was popping all right. Have you ever heard of John McAfee. Um, if it's involved with the computer program virus virus, Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the guy who invented that. He's quite a character, and that's what we're talking about today. John David McAfee was born in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England,

on September eighteenth. His father was an American soldier and his mother was a British person. He was raised in Salem, Virginia, although other sources say Roanoke. Like most things about John McAfee, the story is a little different depending on who you hear it from, which is kind of one of the first signs that somebody's a little bit of a scammer. Now. McAfee's mom worked as a bank teller. His dad was

a road surveyor and a drunk. McAfee says he was a very unhappy man and who beat both John and his mother. He shot himself and John was fifteen. Uh and McAfee later told Wired in an interview, quote, 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. So starting this on a dark note, but also a very juicy backstory, like a scammer needs like something to feign vulnerability with everybody.

That story. He's like, yeah, I stold at your wallet, but really, my dad stole his dad, his whole life. I love it. Wait to his dad have an accent? Do we know? No? I mean his dad was an American. I'm guessing his mom did. It would have been exact. He has kind of a weird voice, but I wouldn't say he sounds he doesn't. She doesn't sound British. No, alright, scam level. Oh yeah, I trust anything British people say. Absolutely. It's a superpower they have. It's why they ruled the

world briefly. Yeah, exactly. That's why when you become rich, you become British. That's why Madonna is British now exactly. I as soon too will be British one day. I'll come on this podcast and all of enough money tod like this, but continue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's a that's a great that's a great Madonna pretending to be British accent, by the way, because it doesn't sound British or fake British, it sounds Madonna fake British exactly. Specific

shout out to a number one scammer. John enrolled in Rowan Oak College. He sold magazine scriptions door to door in order to make money for Booze, which, like his dad, he drank way too much of uh. In interviews, McAfee claims he made a fortune in the subscriptions business by telling people who answered the door that they'd won a free subscription, they just had to pay a shipping and handling figure. Yes, that's the oldest late night TV scam ever.

That's how I got my ice potty. It was free, but I just paid and shipping and handling ice potty. You know, it's not a potty like for peeing, like like you know how it's like a bowl. It's probably about the name, but it's a bowl and then the ice is made on the sides, and then you cracked the bowl and you got a bowl of ice. I've never heard you've never seen this info martial. Now, can you sell me one of these fantastic products? Lay listen,

ice without the limitations of plastic containers. Are you entertaining? I spoke it for your one? Are you sick? I spoke it for your head? Are you ice? Helmet? But yeah, that's how they get you, y'all. And that's door to door too, so there's no way to confirm or deny. Shout out to him. Always door to door. People like are normally scammers. That's like the first startup scam for most scammers. And you would think that maybe we'd have gene. Yes, Genie sounds sexier than past. I get that ice. Genie

is free. You just gotta send a little money. So John got his bachelor's degree in nineteen sixty seven. He started studying for a PhD in mathematics at Northeast Louisiana State College, but he got expelled for sleeping with and then marrying an undergraduate student he was supposed to be managing. He bounced around so of coding jobs, but his career was interrupted when he got busted buying pot. He managed to avoid any sort of conviction, probably because he was

a white guy. Uh get busted by pot? I mean who was getting busted by? And this is nineteen six, the sixties, so maybe it happened more. I feel like that's that's even more cause for it not to be how you got bust. We both come from Dallas. I know people who got busted buying weed. Oh yeah, this feels like the laziest way to go to jail is like it has to feel dumb. He wasn't just going around everywhere like free love freeweed, I think in some places.

But if he was in Louisiana, like like an undercover cop, try to something, Hi, sir, would you like to partake it? Would you like some? Mary? Joanna, Mary, Mary Anne Jane. Do you like puffing on reverse? Meet me in this alley? Yeah? Maybe he was just shitty at buying pot, But anyway, he got out of the charges. In the nineteen sixty nine, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company hired him to basically prog him their IBM based computers to schedule trains. Now, McAfee

didn't know how to do any of this. He wrote out a fake resume and he got the job because there was no internet back then. There's no way to check on the ship, like, yeah, shout out to him. Here's wired quote. After six months, McAfee's system began to turn out optimize train routing patterns. One morning, he decided to experiment with another psychedelic called d MT. He did a line, felt nothing, and decided to snort a whole bag of the orange Is powder. Within an hour, my

mind was shattered. McAfee says part of him still believes he's still on that trip, that everything since has been one giant hallucination, and that one day he'll snap out of it and find himself back on his couch and St. Louis listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. What have you ever had a drug trip like that? No, because I'm just I'm scared to go that deep. But I will say that I have done acid, and you could definitely go to work our acid. You know, everyone's

made ascid out to be so crazy. I know someone who micro does his acid every single day and the happiest person I've ever met. And apparently you can do your job on acid. I've done a lot of different jobs on acid. One episode of this podcast was recorded on acid, but I won't tell. Everyone has to get but he's got to guess which episode. If you guess correct, we will send you I can I can't send you, I will send you behind the bastard swag. All you have to send me is a hundred dollars for shipping

and handling. I'll send you some acid. All you've got to send me is I didn't even notice she doing a scam there, Lacy. That was good, like the finesse. You gotta have the finesse ready made. That so smooth. But yeah, so you can do shot on assets. Are you telling me that this guy scammed his way into

this job that he had no routing trains? So also, can we just realize how with the gravity of train routing and they didn't even ask, They didn't even ask my man is to like route one train, you know in a training process that we're like, here, can you show us how you route the train? Like, so, trains could have been crashing, people could have just been dying left around. People just trusted anything printed on paperback then was like why OK, and it's embossed, all right? What's this?

He vet? Oh the job is yours. The job is yours, sir. Let's put some lives in this man's hands right away. Oh god? But then he got good at it? Well, yeah, I mean maybe it's just not that hard. I've never routed trains. Neither have I yea, but I can see how Like there's that guy Doc Ellis who pitched a no hitter in baseball on LSD, Like, I can see how the way that acid works, how you could you could do that sort of job. Well, for sure, because

you're like, it's about focus and stuff. I remember just staring at some trees for yeah, And I understand what he's saying about, like having a trip that goes so far that you're never quite sure that you've come back from it. Because I thought there's there's a couple of those. I still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes pretty sure. I'm back in Denton at in the morning twelve years ago. That is a specific I did

a lot of drugs in den back in the day. Right, Is this a good place in dn Are you like, oh, I'm back in that dinner is very good place. And didn't This is very true, there's no good Sorry didn't Texas you know your trash. We all know some solid DFW area. I'm back at the water Burger. I can tell it's didn't because there's that smell in the air. Right, drugs in the Bama so I could think I'm back somewhere nice. Yeah, that would have been That would have

been a wiser choice. So drugs did as drugs do, and McAfee accelerated into a massive, uncontrollable addiction. He started doing cocaine every morning, drinking a bottle of hard liquor every day. His marriage fell apart. You know all the things that you expect from a serious substance abuse problem. And I don't think he's lying about this. Just based on what comes next, I'm pretty sure this part's true.

In the nineteen seventies, he moved to Silicon Valley, where drugs come from, and of course his problems got even worse. But still he was able to maintain a sometimes unstable but generally profitable career as a programmer. By nineteen eighty three, he was director of engineering at a company called Omex. He was thirty eight years a selling cocaine to his employees and railing lines off his desk every morning in Santa clar In. This might have made him one of

the less wild middle managers in the country. Look, I watched woof of wall ship and yeah, that ship is problematic. And I'm glad work places are safe, but by O, boy, would I have loved to just have one day at a job where everybody was just doing cocaine in the bathroom. Alright, is everyone here for the morning meeting gregor? Okay? And that's part of why I hate those guys, because they had to like funk with people's money, and they had to like I'm gonna guess most of them were rape two.

If we could have all just made it be a thing where everybody was just always doing drugs at work, what a better economy that would be. The FBI was just railing lines of you know, PCP or something and then going out in the morning, Like yeah, but so much energy, so much energy, you know what I mean? Not much I could get done every day the shutdown. They wouldn't have even noticed, Like it's been thirty days. I haven't slept in thirty days. Oh, I haven't gotten paid.

I got a check on this. I need to buy more. Unfortunately, one of the side of extra drugs is poor judgment. So that is a big part of the John McAfee story. Yeah, so he describes himself at this time as constantly terrified about running out of drugs. He contemplated suicide on the daily basis, and eventually misery drove him to a therapist who sent him to Alcoholics anonymous, And that seemed to work really well for John McAfee for a little while.

He sobered up, he claims forever. But as you'll learn, what John claim should not be taken at face value at any rate. He told Wired, his first A meeting is what really started his life. Now sober McAfee swared to unthinkable heights. He got a job designing software for Lockheed Martin UH and it was there that he came across his very first computer virus, something called the Pakistani brain ter virus is good weird names. Here's a wonderful Fast Company article on John written by a guy named

Jeff wise quote. Seeking an opportunity, he picked the virus apart and figured out how to defeat it. Then he built a program called virus Scan that could detect him disarm multiple threats automatically. The program, the first commercial antivirus software, was an impressive achievement, but it's what he did next that was true genius. See John didn't start selling his anti virus instantly. He started giving it away. He just

put it out there for any company to use. And this was an early enough era that nobody else was doing this, So all these companies that had just now learned and like viruses were a problem. Some ceo wakes up in the morning season news store and he's like, oh my god, we have ten thousand computers. He learns there's a free program. So all these companies start downloading John's free program to give him a free sample. You get him that he's doing the same thing the drug

dealers do. Yeah, he's also doing the same thing he did with him Damn magazine. Yeah, you get a free subscription. Yeah it's free. It's free, buddy. Yeah. In no time, he had like thirty million people like using his software, and within a couple of years, half of the fortune

five hundred companies used McAfee any virus software. So we started McAfee Associates out of his small home in Santa Clara, and he eventually started offering licenses to these companies, and because they were big companies, they wanted the security of knowing this isn't just a free product. We're like paying a company to maintain our stuff and make sure. So he kind of went seamlessly from free product to making millions and millions of dollars. He became the world's biggest

evangelist of the apocalyptic dangers of computer viruses. He started showing up on television invented is that, No, this is this is prior to that. We're talking like the late eighties. Yeah, yea, so he would he would just show up. But he was one of the first guys showing up on TV and like daily news programs talking about viruses. Yeah, scaring us about this virus is going to do this. It's

gonna do this. And in nineteen eighty nine he wrote a book called Computer Viruses, Worms, data diddlers, killer programs and other Threats to your system. There's a lot of threats. That's a lot of threats. All this did well enough that by nineteen ninety he was making five million dollars a year off of his anti virus business. Pretty great.

My nineteen one, Far away from John McAfee in the fabled land of Australia, another anti virus expert named Roger Reordan discovered a unique new virus coded to deliver a debilitating injection of code. On March six, Code that would wipe out all infected computers discovered or create. No, he discovered. I mean he he was a researcher. I haven't. I haven't run in any Yeah, like he's it was his job was looking at stuff. This guy is not the scammers, the scams coming in us. Maybe he was. I don't.

I don't know anything about that. I'm also suspect of him, But go ahead, because he's the Australian lazy. Listen, you never know what's going on down under exactly because it's down under, so you can't see it. That's what makes them so shady. Anyway. Yeah, uh so Reordan named this virus he had found Michael Angelo, not because it was a work of art, but because March sixth was Michael Angelo's birthday. Now, the Michael Angelo virus was not actually a big deal. It had a bunch of flaws that

made it not super dangerous. It hadn't been coded well, so left to its own devices, it would have made almost no impact. But John McAfee read about this virus and he knew that there his potential in just its name. Because Michael Angelo. That's like a Hollywood virus. Oh yeah, that's a very sexy virus. Yeah, you can imagine someone explaining that virus to like Bruce Willis and then having to go punch people to stop it. Right, Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's just Bruce Bis or Liam

Neeson nick chopping people neck chopping for a whole movie. Yeah. Yeah, you got a solid ninety minutes out of that five or six secrets. Probably never shoots anyone, Okay, he beats everyone's ass individually. No, he's guns aren't allowed in his hands because you know, I had half of like a Chuck Norris style joke there, and I just lost it. Lazy damn. That's a solid Chuck Norris style joke, though, Yeah you could. You've got the pieces. Yeah, someone ad

put it together tweet it to us. Yeah. So John McAfee started claiming, based on nothing really, that the Michael Angelo virus was going to disabled five million PCs when it started, and that was a lot of in the nineties, right, right. Isn't this like the era where the computers look like a ghosts, where like it was like green, Yeah, everything's green and there's like giant the monitors. Way more than our television student told us any thing about virus expecting

but you're gonna tell me. Patrick Swayzy and the Ghost we really go come back and active ship hand in it could strangle you from your monitor. Whoopie Goldberg said, Win Dangerer. This was right around the time that Whoopi Goldberg started that movie next to a fake Tyrannosaurus where they were both cops. Great moment in pop culture history. A lot of people forget that movie, but they shouldn't. It was called Teddy Rex and it was amazing. Kidding, No, it's a real movie. It's a real movie. It was

somewhere sometime in the nice anyway. Yeah, as you just said, uh, this was in the early nineties. Nobody knew anything about computers or viruses and stuff, so everyone just kind of like took McAfee's word for this. He was on TV. He was on TV. He was like the nation's number one viru antivirus expert. That's what people had called him, just because nobody else was talking talking about it, because

he was the only he was the only one. Imagine getting to just be the expert by deepa because nobody else. Oh yeah, it's amazing. That's the best way to make a shipload of money. Yeah, and yeah he uh, he nailed it right place at the right time. I'm gonna read a quote from a two thousand twelve article from the website Naked Security. Thousands of PCs could crash by Friday, screamed USA Today. Deadly virus set to wreak havoc tomorrow was a headline in the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the Los

Angeles Times declared painted scary. So this is how like everybody's covering this thing. Like John McAfee talks up the Michaelangelo virus and then everybody's freaking out about how it's going to disable all these computers and crash the economy. CNN sent a film crew to McAfee's offices because they wanted to like them us. They were hoping that like they'd be getting thousands of calls and everybody running around typing and yeah, I hope that McAfee hired crisis actors. Uh,

he actually kind of did. Oh, not quite that, but he released a special anti virus program built solely around Michael Angelo. But since it was actually really easy to scan for this virus, he made the program scan a bunch of unnecessary files, so it took like ten times longer than it needed to because he wanted them to feel like it was Yeah, maybe I got it's taken so long. So McAfee had initially claimed, as I said, that the virus had hit as many as five million

machines um. The estimate went down to one million by like March second Nino, and then a couple of days later it was any McAfee said it was anywhere between fifty thousand and five million computers. So he starts revising down the estimates. People by his product. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,

it's a it's it was a grift um. And you know, when Michael Angelo actually activated, there was only very few computers, like like I think a few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand, but like not a significant number got hit.

It didn't really do any damage. But that didn't actually matter because John McAfee had succeeded in drumming up enough fear about viruses that every major company had to have anti virus software on its computers, and they all wound up using McAfee because he was the guy talking about this ship. In October of nineteen two, his company went public and raised forty two million dollars in its first round.

By nine, McAfee's personality and showmanship had made the adults in the room decide to edge him out of his own company. He left, cashed out his stock and wound up with around a hundred million dollars. Personality and showmanship, so he was coked up and drunk acting a fool. Yeah. Yeah, there are apparently sex contests in the office and stuff like that. Sex contest, people sucking on desks, like fucking on desk. I hope you can imagine me a soldier

boy right now. Like contests? What that's how you know? You really while in network? Like yeah, yeah, if there's a sex contest at your anti virus company, your anti virus company, irony of that, Like a lot of people got clamity at the anti virus company. Anti virus company. I thought you were going to anti I was company. Yeah, but it was some sex contest. I'm kidding, I don't virus.

But it was clearly one of those things where the company was when it was suddenly when it was worth a huge amount of money, and like a lot of companies relying on it. The adults that God brought in were like this guy is a fucking nut. We can't we can't have them running this business. Let's when other people have money involved, and it's like, Okay, come on back, little you're crazy, you're a huge lie, you're a gigantic problem.

You're not even doing miles. You're gonna commit felonies. We can't have you around here like you're doing kinds of crimes where other people got to go to jail with you. You know, you do a Trump level cross where it's like a whole consortition with people who got to go to jail at the same time. Yeah, So McAfee's out. He was forty seven years old with you know, we're effectively unlimited resources. And so he immediately spent twenty five million dollars buying a two and eighty acre compound in

Colorado and a ten thousand square foot mansion. So McAfee's out of his company, he's rich, and he has beginning the next stage of his life. And we're gonna get into what comes next. But first, lazy, are you a fan of products? Oh, you don't, I love products? You like a service or two over now? And then absolutely, I'm a big fan of both. And we've got a great list of products and or services for the ears. The people listen, and we're back. Uh, we just got

into some products and services. And now we are talking again about John McAfee at this part in our story, has bought himself a gigantic mansion, uh and is now getting really into yoga. Um. So that's the thing he does first after he after he gets out of this you know company he built, as he buys a mansion in Colorado and a couple hundred acres of land, and he starts at yoga retreat. Okay, how does cocaine and

yoga work together? He's not doing cokey, He's sober at this and that may be true at this point in the story. He may actually still be sober. I'm inclined to believe it. Yeah, because yoga doesn't seem like relaxing. Yeah, you know, cocaine, al right, guys, not mistake alright, guys, we're getting Yeah, I feel like that's too intense. Okay, cool,

I'll believe you. McAfee. Yeh. He got really into yoga, starts doing yoga retreats, and he also launches an app called pow Wow, which was a very early chat client. When I read an article about it in the Register. It was described as Native American themed. I don't know what the hell does that mean, like the Radskins. That's not a good idea. I don't know. I'm not sure if it was offensively done or not. The probably it was the nineties, So yeah, almost about Native American themes.

Sounds like it's not offensive. Something really bad. It was African American themes. Yeah, I'll get it right, chicken watermelon Like I'm black? Guys, did I say that I'm black? I can say that. Yeah, that doesn't sound good. That sounds bad, especially since John McAfee is a guy with very prominent tribal tattoos on both of his own Is he native? A man can know he is? He is as white a man as it gets. His last names McAfee a tribe. That it was a cute out of

water buffalo. Si, now I'm going to help. Yeah, this doesn't sound good. So he has an app. He has an app. Some people say that it was ahead of its time. It was like a chat client like aim. You know, if those of you who are old enough to have used all instant Messenger or like skype Chat

or whatever. But before anyone else was doing a chat client. Um. It didn't clearly went out and dominate the market, but he was able to sell the venture for like seventeen million dollars before Aim and Skype you came into it, so he made more money. He did good, But he decided this was all of the business he wanted to be into for the rest of his life. After selling Pow Wow, he vowed to devote himself to quote the opposite of the business world. What are you both laughing at? Um?

Sophie just sent me a picture of John McAfee. Well good, he looks like if Richard Branson did more drugs than Richard Branson does. Yeah, like if Richard Branson was in a motorcycle gang and then for some reason was stranded on the island and lost a bunch of weight. Yeah. So of pictures of John McAfee, he's shirtless, and in fift of those pictures he's armed. He has a tie on in this where are we going? And it will

often be shirtless with a gun strapped around his chest. O. God, John McAfee, all right, he's not that man yet right now. He's the recent he's yoga, he's a Native American. He's just decided he's tired of business. He wants to be into the opposite of the business world for the rest of his life. So he starts teaching yoga, and he wrote like four books on yoga, which I haven't been

able to read yet. I read some reviews of them, and they seem like they were pretty normal for the most part, if you're like into that kind of stuff for books from a yoga A ton of white dudes have written yoga book that's true, and I don't buy them. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not saying i'd buy them, but like none of the reviews are like he's talking about fucking aliens or anything. Like the people who buy it like they're in the they want that. Yeah, apparently one of

them does talk about time travel, telepathy, and levitation. So it is possible that John McAfee believes or believed at one point that he could read minds. If I had that much money, I would think I could. Why not, Sure, I can see that leading you into some wild places, which that's what the story is about. So that kind of thing spiraled until the compound had turned into like a really active yogur retreat, and John McAfee decided that that was too much work, so he kind of pieced

the funk out. So in August two thousand two, on a flight to Kathman do John McAfee read an article about a device called a trike. Now, trikes are basically motorcycles attached to small planes. They can travel it around a hundred miles an hour and zip along at just twenty or thirty feet above the ground. McAfee was enchanted by this idea. He started going out to New Mexico learning how to fly by jaunting from airport to airport.

And this is like his new rich man hobby that he fucking falls in love this, so like, fuck, yo, a fun Colorado, I'm gonna I'm gonna fly around in these weird little motorcycle planes. Yeah. So in two thousand and three he bought a tricked out cheap and he and his girlfriend, who was like in her mid twenties at this point, and he's like fifties. He was like

late forties. Ok. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's not like criminal, but it's like kind of what you'd expect from a forty seven year old guy with a hundred million dollars you're going to you're gonna start dating four year old? Yeah, whatever, you're doing what a million other guys who got rich of done. Um. Yeah. So he and his girlfriends start like driving around in a jeep looking for beautiful landmarks

in the desert to build rudimentary airports on. They decided, like the real problem with these strikes is that you had to have air strips to land in, so like you couldn't really go anywhere that pretty because they didn't have like crazy range, so you just have to fly from one town's airport to the next. Nobody wants to do that. So they started like finding all these beauties. Want the black plane there. No, he wanted to like fly around canyons in the middle of the high desert

and stuff. So he like made all these airstrips in the middle of the desert. He bought hundreds of acres of land and made a bunch of like a network of airstrips, and like the idea was to turn arrow Trekking, which he is, like the name he coined for the sport, into like a badass extreme sport where people would have adventures in like the wild desert, flying from these isolated little airstrip to airstrip and like this network, he don't

made that possible. So when he talked to the Wall Street Journal, McAfee explained, my personality is such that I can't do something halfway, which you know that's true. He follows through. Uh. In two thousand four, John McAfee founded The Sky Gypsy's who basically served why is he always uses some problematic terminology? Mercy had the Native American app not at the sky Jersey like what el does he go come out with? Okay, have like the inWORD boat,

like what is happening? Yeah? I mean he doesn't include groups of people into these sales. No, don't point at me like that. This this story Lacy ends with both a boat and racism, but not quite that way. I have not read this guy's I have no idea what's happening. I'm so upset that I'm guessing. I guess because my scammera brain. I understand. Yeah, but I will say, shout out to the gold digger. I'm not going to gonna

call her a gold digger. Maybe she wasn't golled digger, but I don't give I don't get super hot for like old dudes. But if they got money, you sexy now. But she's out here riding around in the desert with this phone normally just got a nice dinners and they take you on vacation. Like she wasn't really loved him. I think she yeah, And it seems like she was having a like they seem to have had like a good time for a while. It seems like it was one of those things where she was like, Yeah, I'll

go have adventures in the desert for for you. That sounds great. I feel like I would come update. That's sound like some Scott Peterson type don't come back from those no thanks, And a couple of people do come up dead on the John okay, but not her, not her. Yeah. The sky Gypsies were all Arrow trekkers too. They were a mix of other rich people McAfee liked and random strangers he plucked out of obscurity and gave a role

in his weird flying club. He bought an enormous house with several hangars in rural New met to Go and filled it with vintage automobiles he and his friends could off road in. Uh. The sky Gypseys grew to two hundred members, each playing between five hundred and two hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year for the right to

hang out with John and fly baby plane. So like some of them were like random people would read about him and like travel to his compound, and especially if they were a young woman, he'd be like, sure, we'll just train you how to fly and it's free. And then some of them were like his millionaire friends, where you know, they'd pay a shipload of money. But so this was like the fire festival but would like bike planes. Well, but they actually did it years. Yeah, yeah, Like it

wasn't like it was a real thing. Like they built this network of run and runways and they flew around round for years. So like it's not a total skin. Yeah, it's not a skin yeah. Um. And it's like it's one of those things he was charging them because there's upkeep on the runways, which I'm sure there is. Yeah. Absolutely. So here's how the Wall Street Journal described John McAfee's

life at this time. Quote from May through October, when winds and temperatures are most favorable, as many as a hundred and fifty pilots in their aircraft des send on Roado, which is where his compound was, and other airports, and stay for weeks at a time. At night, Mr McAfee and his compadres, some of whom are retired engineers, physicians, and fellow multimillionaires, often gathered before the large television set on his villa's patio to watch a selection of the

six thousand DVDs in his personal library. One night, a group of gypsies, including Mr McAfee, decided they wanted tattoos. They drove a hundred sixty miles to a Seedee parlor and festoon themselves with tattoos of the ornate Celtic wing the sky Gypsy's adopted as their logo. The group's quirky website describes Mr McAfee and his twenty seven year old girlfriend as John and Jin, two derelicts who didn't lose

their last names, but have never divulged them. We don't have a clue about them, it adds, So that's how all this has been built. At the time, it's fun, it's carefree, which is all sound like sobriety. It sounds like what a guy who loves being wasted and then knows he can't do that anymore because they'll kill himself.

But has unlimited money does instead of drugs. I'm just gonna I'm gonna just gonna spend all day flying in planes as fast as I can, Yeah, to get that thrill, and like John and Gin, keep a bunch of people around me. So I yeah, okay. You know, if you're the kind of person who has a huge drug problem, you're always that kind of person. You just got to find something to throw yourself into. And that's and this is I mean, this is healthier than cocaine. Yeah, so

far it's whatever. You know, he's not a monster yet, He's just not you know what. This is just weird, but it's like rich people weird. So far, this is the story of a scammer who cashed out and then did something cool other than the cultural appropriation. But I problem with flying around on the Celtic thing like so you'll just want to got some symbols. I don't know what these mean. McAfee is I'm sure I think that part is probably not like maybe he's probably Scott's irish.

I'm gonna guess emails anything about mom came from me, McAfee. That one sounds Okay, yeah, you can have a Celtic wing if you get a Mac in your name, right right. As cool and extreme as John's life was, that battitude accusing the word man, I haven't gotten to use that since the nineties was not without cost to steal. An incredible sentence from Digital Trends writer Andrew Coots quote the sky Gypsy's would later prove to be one of McAfee's

various downfalls. Hell of a sentence. Sky Gypsies just sounds like it couldn't fail. Yeah, it sounds like how could this go wrong. Near the end of two thousand six, McAfee's twenty one year old nephew, Joe Biddow, the head of the sky Gypsy's flight school, went up on a training flight with an aspiring Gypsy named Robert Gibson. Mr. Oh Yeah, dangerous nepotism. Mr Gibson was sixty one years old, roughly the same age as John McAfee, and newly retired.

Like John, he decided that aerotrekking was a great way to spend his golden years. There was only one problem, and it was that Joel, ostensibly the head trainer, only had a sport pilot certificate, not an actual pilot's license. Now, Fast Company interviewed an f A spokesperson about this, who said, quote, someone with a sport pilot certificate cannot be paid for providing instruction, So legally this is a little bit of a gray area. You're not specifically banned from teaching people

how to fly. You've got a sport pilot certificate which can't be paid to It can't be your job, which means that we can't trust because we can't trust that you know what you're doing, so you can't like, if you want to teach your friend how to fly, we can't stop you. But like you can't be the head of a flight school, right right, right, Like I can do my friends here at home, but I can't open the salon. And or your your uncle can't hire you

to run his desert flight school. We hire steaks and that, Like you're teaching me about to fly and you don't know how to fly yourself, right, Yeah, so he's also a scammer. Runs in the family, shout out to them. Yeah. So these two guys, Joe Bitto and Robert Gibson go out flying and they wind up flying through a box canyon which is apparently the most dangerous thing to fly through because there's very little and he crashes and they

both die horribly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the Fast Company article goes into more detail about McAfee's reaction to the death of both his nephew. In an innocent grandpa quote. After the accident, McAfee says he struggled to understand how it could have happened. He speculate, how could putting an untrained man in charge of a pilot school. Okay, cool, so he didn't know how to fly plane, but still basically McAfee like positive that the old guy had been sick and had had had a heart attack during the

flight and had like fallen onto the kite's wing. So he hadn't made up a whole he just he just lies. No, dude, you're you're untrained nephew got them both killed. Yeah, And isn't that the plot to that one book? What's that book called? Don't you know what? The pilot has a heart attack and then the kid is out with an axe the hatchet, Hatchet, that's the plot of the Hatchet. That is kind of the plot of Hatchet, except for the kid is the guy flying and dies right, He

was like, how can I spend this? Um? Yeah, he had a heart attack anyway. Quote. To honor Beto's memory, McAfee had the image of a single tear drop added below his sky Chipsy's tattooed. Yeah, so he murdered his nephew. Is that what he's trying to murder? Murder? I'll say that that's a fair that that part's not appropriation. You did kill two guys, carry on. In an interview later, McAfee said, quote, aero tricking can create an avenue for

self awareness. He told me seven months after Biddoh and Gilson died, you find self awareness by breaking boundaries, breaking taboos. Do you think you'll ever get bored of this too, I asked, I anticipate that happening, he said. It doesn't worry me at all. The seven months after he gets two people killed, he's already sputted into something optimism. It's just whatever. Yeah, you know, people dies sometimes theyr nephew, Yes, sometimes they're your nephew. Sometimes they're your nephew for your

unregistered flight school. That's just the way it goes. In two thousand nine, the housing market crashed and the rest of the economy followed soon after two eight Actually, the arrest of the economy followed soon after. For brief time, hack journalists did a brisk business writing articles about former industry titans who had also lost a lot of money in the crash. Perhaps the most prominent of these was

John McAfee. Here's an exerpt from an ABC News article at the time titled anti virus software pioneer gets a dose of reality quote. Like many wealthy Americans, McAfee was hit hard with the simultaneous collapse of real estate stocks in Wall Street investment banks. But he got whacked more than most, since much of his fortune was tied up in luxury properties. Oddly enough, when real estate markets crash, it's the higher end properties that crashed most, simply because

they're not necessities. He said, My father always said real estate. You can't lose in real estate. You know, oddly enough you can. So yeah. He he put his property in New Mexico up for auction, sold his property in Colorado. Various sources I found say he was claiming his wealth had been reduced to less than ten million dollars, sometimes less than five million. Wow. Yeah, McAfee sold everything and

later in two thousand nine, he moved to Belize. So was he not making any money off of fly airbikes? That was all a scam. Rumors started floating in the air show circuit that he had moved to Belize in been in all of these articles about how he lost his fortune in order to hide the fact that he still had most of his money um and move his assets, you know, out of the country into movies. So he gets he gets on the news and he was like, yeah, you know, I lost all my money. I lost all

my money at a YadA YadA. But really he's just shoving stuff over to Belize because he knows that like the family of this guy who died at his flight schools, yeah, shout out to him. He was like, this disparaging article, I'll take it. He was like, yeah, we're cold. This is gonna work out great. Yeah. Yeah. In the years since the crash, John McAfee has repeatedly and openly claimed that these stories about the collapse of his fortune were all lies, told to protect himself from the many frivolous

lawsuits against him. In two thousand seventeen, he told ABC News in a in an interview, quote I've had two hundred lawsuits in my life because my name is John McAfee. No, I didn't lose everything. I wanted to stop people from trying to sue me. So John didn't move to Belize alone. He brought along a small entourage, including some of his sky gypsies and his long term girlfriend, Jennifer Irwin. Wired talked to her around this time. Quote John has always

been searching for something, says Jennifer Irwin. She remembers him telling her once that he was trying to reach the expansive horizon, but that expansive horizon seemed to be rushing away from John. He was in his early sixties now, his negligence had ruined his weird airplane club, and he was hiding his assets from a multitude of lawsuits. To make all that even worse, he was getting old. John seems to be one of those people who has always just been sort of naturally robust. He has a high

tolerance for substances. He probably recovers quickly when he has a drug binge. He seems to have a fast metabolism that all aided him during his twenty years of being a rich adventure junkie but vitality only lasts so long without chemical assistance. So John McAfee started injecting his butt with testosterone twice a month. He moved into a beachside mansion and belize at an expat heavy community called ambergris K. There he launched a cigar company, coffee company, and a

water taxi company. He claimed he was basically handing the business to locals for free, but it's just as likely that this was part of some scheme to hide his money. Now. He also took up a hobby of lying about himself on the Internet. During this time, he would claim to live in different countries than he did. He would put up false Facebook posts to make it look like he was building houses and countries where he didn't reside. That

sort of thing. Jeff Wise wrote about this quote. Like many of McAfee's pranks, these gags are both fun and purposeful. There are, he mentions, five civil lawsuits against him currently pending in the United States. That's how it is in the States, He says, if people know you have money, they'll sue you, and his Facebook sham was just a harmless game of cat and mouse. The judge in one case he couldn't understand why I would put incorrect information about myself on the web. He says, I told him

when I put that up, I wasn't under oath. He asked me why I would do such a thing. I said, I thought that if somebody wanted to serve me papers, it would be much more enjoyable for everyone involved if they tried to serve those papers to me and Honduras. So John McAfee moves to the lice just starts lying about himself to everyone he can, every journalist you can.

And around this time he starts claiming in another interview that he started a business that's like rich people paying to watch other people do yoga, because he claims that studies show that you've gained benefits from exercise by watching people exercise. So he tells that to a journalist. But it's all just a lie, like he's just lying to reporters all the time, like this is a great plan. Yeah, we don't know where he lives, I don't know if

he's got money. He's just lying to everyone about everything about him. And if you're going to do the things that John McAfee is about to do, it helps to shoot some chaff out into it. Maybe that's why I had a long game here. Yeah, it's the long game. And if you're playing the long game, listener, then you might want some of the fine products and or services that support this podcast and or program. And we're back. We're talking about John McAfee, who has just moved to

Billy's uh in two thousand ten. During his second year there, he met a young doctor named Allison at Anisio. Here's how she described her journey to Jeff Wise. When I turned to their I cried on paper. Everyone envied me. I just bought a house, I had a partner in a job at Harvard. I just gotten a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a three year research program. I realized that the prospect of spending another three years

in the lab was incredibly depressing. So I wrote a letter to a bunch of resorts and Belize, asking if I could come down at work and play my guitar. So this young woman who just finishes getting her medical degree flies down to Belize. Just been like a year playing guitar, chilling out and like living, having having fun. Before so envious of these lots, And then I was just like, I don't want to go somewhere and play my guitar. I want to fly an air or bike,

Like what the fun is? Kind of lives? Are these here talking and pay my bills? Every guy damn day I had flying on AirBike and playing no damn guitar. And then also the people that McAfee took with him to Brazil's like, hey, y'all, y'all want to just come live in in Belize. I think their job was just being part of his entourage, Like they were just a millionaire's ontour. I shouldn't. That's your gig. That's a solid employment. Well, and and Allison found what she thought was solid employment

this way. So she winds up playing guitar at a are where McAfee is and he starts talking to her, uh, and she talks to him about like the research that she wants to do and like what she's gonna do when she goes back home. And the research she was doing wasn't something called quorum testing. So it's like a way to fight bacteria without using antibiotics. It's like other kinds of substances that they don't kill bacteria, but they

reprogrammed them so they're not dangerous. So this is the research Allison wanted to get into, right, So she tells McAfee about all this, and he's like, hell, i'll fund your research. I'm a crazy millionaire out here because she's talking about like how oh yeah, they find a lot of these chemicals and like plants and stuff, like jungle plants. There's a lot of different medicines in them. And he's like, it's great, that's great, I'll give you a bunch of money.

You'll find medicine out here. So yeah, that John McAfee hires this doctor Lady side unseen and decides he's going to get into the business of making medicine. Yeah, why not other business trains, planes, autoimmune diseases. Yeah, it's the natural evolution of what he's into. So funding Allison's research quickly turned into John McAfee buying a bunch of land and an isolated jungle chunk of Belize, building a compound there, and creating a laboratory for Dr Anonisio to work in.

The stated goal of this lab was to find new bacteria fighting medicines, but very quickly things started to get weird. Oh I know, I know, it's contest weird or you wish it was sex contest weird. M although there's some there's some sex stuff coming up. Gosh, and I've been to Belieze. It's like very ugly. They're yeah, and then belie o hell no, like the beaches are gross. There's a lot of jungle life and plans like jungle life and cash you plants. Is that it's trash. Don't go

to believe. I'm gonna say, go to beliefs. Don't just don't be John McAfee. Only go if you are John McAfee. So he creates this plant. So he creates this thing in the jungle, this this, this, this lab in the jungle, and he moves his doctor out there and yeah, yeah. He starts inviting journalists over at his jungle compound to talk about his new venture, including our friend Jeff Wise at Fast Company. Now, Jeff visited in early two thousand and ten, and at that time most of McAfee ships

seemed to be together. So McAfee said, ship like, for twenty years, I played around, and now I'm serious about doing something positive. So he's trying to like, I'm gonna you know, especially since he just got two people killed. I'm gonna do a do a good thing here. I'm gonna give back to the world to provide a heal the planet. So there were some signs that things might

be wrong. McAfee lied to Wise and told him that he and Dr ed Anisio had been working together for two years when they've only been working together for seven months. He also called her like a leading mind in the field when she was really just starting out. Like so he's over yeah, he oversells everything to reporters, but there is a lab they are working on stuff. She seems

to be seriously trying to do something. Um. But during that interview in two thousand ten, McAfee kind of like suddenly dropped the information that his company mission had expanded beyond making medicine to making fun drugs. So fuck drugs, FU drugs. So the worst sex contest happening probably, I mean between Mr McAfee and himself. He just can't stop.

He just can't stop. So he Basically the way Allison told Jeff Wise, the journalist who's interviewing her, is that McAfee suddenly came to her with a brainstorm that what if what if we tried to find like an herbal compound that would be a libido booster to women. Uh. You know, then we could make a bunch of money which we could use to fund our other research into medicine. So it's just like his whole personal problem. He's like, ladies are no longer aroused by me? Can you make something?

He's like using this for his own drug compact. He said, can you make something that makes me sexy women? Yeah, that might be what's going on. He was just trying to make like Spanish fly in a lab. Yeah, it's It's also I don't think he has much of an attention span, so that might be part of it. It's certainly part creepy, but it also might part be John McAfee can't focus on anything from what how do we go from saving lives to like those little pills that

they sell in the gas? He went from saving lives to like extend what heaven? Oh yeah, that is a really quick amount of time. Yeah. So uh. The next major article about John McAfee was published in late two thousand twelve by Wired's Joshua Davis. So in the two years between that Fast Company article where John announces that he's making fun drugs and it is into medicine. And two thousand twelve, when Wired gets on on things, John's

condition degenerated substantially. The Wired article revealed that McAfee had started spending increasing periods of time in an isolated town named Orange Walk, which was kind of near his drug making compound. Now. In emails to friends, John described Orange Walk as quote the asshole of the world. Uh, he wrote in one email, quote my fragile connection with the world of polite society. Had us, without a doubt, been severed, my attire would rank me among the worst dressed Tijuana panhandlers.

My hygiene is no better. Yesterday, for the first time, I urinated it in public in broad daylight. So John, John's going through some ship. Okay, Yeah, I'm drugs catching up or maybe it maybe drugs we will be talking about that, I mean, like the ones that he did in the past. Yeah, and maybe the guilt from killing his nephew and that old guy. Oh you think maybe he has feel like he might have slept well on

that one. And just either way, for whatever reason, when he first moves to belieze, he moves to this like beautiful mansion on the beach, and like a really nice part of Belize, like a resort part of town, and he quickly leaves that to go build a compound in the jungle in like a place nobody goes, like where everybody's really poor and like it's not like a tourist spot.

So he like builds a compound in the jungle, and then he leaves there to go hang out in a dirt, poor small town and like sit around in a really grimy bar and watch prostitutes all day and not drink. Like that's that's what John mc ifee's life turns into at this point. So while he's hanging out at that bar watching prostitutes, he gets to know several prostitutes everything just being a weird old guy hanging out in a

bar watching teenage prostitutes. So he winds up falling in love with one of these teenage but of course he does a sixteen year old girl named Imschweiler Uh, And sixteen is the age of consent in Belize, so he's not committing a crime in Belize. It's important although morally I don't think fifty sixty year old should sixteen years, but there's no it's not like illegal so he dumps his longtime girlfriend for this sixteen year old prostitute. He

brings the prostitute im Schwilder to his compound. Uh, and then she almost murders him. According to that wild shout out to her Schwiler, Im Schwilder and Schwilder. Yeah. According to wired quote, she slipped out of bed and pulled McAfee, Smith and Wesson out of a holster hanging from an ancient Tibetan gong in his bedroom. Her plan, if it could be called that, was to kill him and make off with as much cash as she could scrounge up.

She crept it for the foot of the bed, aimed, and started to pull the trigger, but at the last moment she closed her eyes and the bullet went wide, ripping through a pillow. I guess I didn't want to kill the bastard, she admits. So this will not be the last time that one of John McAfee's lovers almost gets him murdered. Also, he's old as houses. You definitely did not have to murder him to make off with his cash. You could have just thole small amounts every day. Yeah,

you know, you would have been fine. I mean, maybe he's just the kind of guy you want to shoot. He does seem that way. So after he moved to Belize, John's old entourage gradually faded away and was replaced by increasing numbers of young women, including the teenage m schwilder and heavily armed belize In men with criminal backgrounds. She became the R Kelly of Belize. Yeah, but like less

evil but shadier. So like R. Kelly to and hang around with like convicted murderers and is always well okay, R. R Kelly isn't constantly photographed with gang members holding guns next to him, which McAfee is during this period. There's always big like bullies in guys with criminal backgrounds holding like scoped rifles standing behind him with like a pack of wild dogs around him. That's every picture of John

McAfee and Belize is. He is shirtless, he's surrounded by large belies and men holding rifles and like a gaggle of teenage girls and a bunch of dogs. So it's like the chase of his courage. Yeah, this is the Choppo of his career. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would. I would definitely say choppish, although like R. Kelly, we are about to get into a rape allegation. So yeah, I mean that's not totally off base. Yeah, no, it's not shocking either. All monsters have more in common with each

other than than they don't. Absolutely, I mean, this guy was doing sex contests, so we pretty much knew he was a deviant, you know, back in the day. I don't even know if that's devis for all we know he has a salt and people there. Yeah, it might have been. I haven't heard any allegations. Yeah, there's not allegations yet. When those people were interviewed, most of them seemed to think fondly at that time, so it may have just been a bunch of weirdos that have enough

fun company together. Sometimes you get the right one, sometimes you find the right crew. So in two thousand eleven, John McAfee was rated by the Belize and authorities on suspicion of producing meth amphetamine. According to Wired's reporting, McAfee initially stormed out naked wielding a handgun, but once he realized what was happening, he put down his gun and went inside to get pants. He was arrested there by the Belize and police commandos. When he was toldly suspected

him of making meth. He told them that is a startling hypothesis, sir, because I haven't sold drugs since nineteen eighty three. Hey, hey, it's telling the truth. Telling the truth. So the raid hauled out a bunch of guns and someone unidentified crystalline chemical John claimed was related to he and doctor at Anisio's work. But Belize tested the substance and it wasn't meth or anything else illegal. They weren't

really sure what the hell it was. To this day, there is no conclusive answer as to what exactly John McAfee was making in that jungle, although in Part two

we will talk about the best theory. It's worth noting that this was right around the time when John McAfee started posting on the drug forum blue Light about his growing affinity for bath salts, specifically a drug called m D p V. Now, if you've never done m d p V, how would I describe m d Too many letters for me, I'm not going to drug with more than two lettuce I love vp Q eight. That sounds

like my life will never be the same. The m d p V is like if adderall hit you in the face before it started to work like, that's that's m D. It's like angry piste off adderall. That's that's how I described MV drugs to be angry kind of people who take m D p V. That's one of the face eating drugs like these are the bath salts

everybody was talking about back then. Now, when Wired talked to him, McAfee claimed that all of the writing he'd done about bath salts on the internet was actually just another gag to stir up the waters and quote it was the most tongue in cheek thing in the fucking world. If I'm going to do drugs, I'm gonna do something that I know is good. I'm gonna grab some mushrooms number one and maybe get some really fine cocaine. So maybe that's true. Maybe he was lying about bath salts

on the internet to throw over one off the case. Um, but I have read through the posts that he put up on blue Light. They're pretty intricate. John post pictures of lab equipment and asks for very technical advice on how to produce a drug. He seems to know a lot about other people in the forum who are drug chemists, like give him serious answers it's not just you know, bro, this drugs awesome talk. It's like shop talk from chemists

to chemists. So maybe it's all a scam, or maybe him trying to make it into a scam as the scam, and John McAfee was doing a shipload of bath salts, it would make some of this make more sense scam because nobody asks for like, no one asks for specific detail information about making drugs. Was like, no, this is another one of my hygiene. It's not of my hys. John, You're talking for pages about how to like distill this stuff properly. I got you, suckers. You had all those pages,

didn't you know? You literally had chemicals. You had pictures of beakers and you're doing stuff and that. Yeah, I was trying to make Superman. Whatever. The truth about John's experimentation with bassalts. His behavior after this point ratches up to a level of intensity that I think crosses the line into madness and may in fact be the result

of drugged conjection, maybe bassaults, maybe something else. Uh, but you remember that sixteen year old prostitute he was in love with to shoot it, who tried to shoot him but then didn't. Well, she started telling him dire stories about a nearby town called Karmlita, which shout out to Warren Yvon she said was a wretched hive of scum

and villainy. Basically, she starts telling him this town is filled with monstrous criminals who rape and torch with impunity, and it's a big like secret drug hub network and all this terrible stuff. So he kept her around after she tried to shoot him. Oh yeah, of course did he not wake up when the No, he did, and he took the gun out of her hands. But he forgave her. He was like, girl, good, he just he gave her a separate bungalow. Yeah, that's kind of this.

That's not the only time he does that. Damn, he's forgiving. He's forgiving. I'll give that to John McAfee like, oh my god, go to the guest house, give me the gun. Not even the second person to shoot at me today, John McAfee. So um. McAfee told Wired later quote, Carmelita was literally the Wild West. I didn't realize that two miles away was the most corrupt village on the planet. So McAfee says that out of concern that this teenager who tried to kill him, like was telling the truth

about this dangerous town. He basically decided to become batman there. So McAfee's next big move is to start using his wealth to fight crime in the town of Carmelo. Bruce Wayne, Yeah, Bruce Wayne. So he buys a small cement house and hires workers to basically build a jail because the town hadn't had a jail. He calls the cops like responsible for the area and tells them to start arresting people.

And when the police were like, we don't really have any equipment to like do that with, he starts buying him sixteens boots, pepper spray stunt guns and ship like that. You could just get him handguns. John McCafe John mccafee says, this is serious crime going on here. I need to be able to people. One time, some people who actually lived in the area said that McAfee basically made himself a private army and started issuing orders to like go

after people that he didn't like. And he starts he confronts some of these people that he says are criminals with like guns in their own homes, and it's like like low key colonizing beliefs. Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a one man colonize, one man colonize and this is a poor ass like the journalist Joshu Smith. The journalist actually went to Carmelita to try and see, like is

this a dangerous no man's land? Like did he stumble onto a real terrible place that needs fixing and he just finds a poor village filled with people who had no fucking idea? What Johnson should? I have ever heard? I have ever I don't think anybody has lived a wider white man life than John McAfee. He did everything. He did everything, all the white man everything. He started for company and based off lies, he scammed his way running for president. God shout out to him. He did.

He taught card but he across the board, through the middle, the free space, everything. And I'm such a white guy. I didn't even realize that until you said it, Like, yeah, he did do everything that a white guy can do. Listen, this is what I will to say about mcaphee. You talk about take advantage of some privilege. Yes, motherfucker took a prandedge to the fullest extent. He squeezed all of the juice out of whiteness. They're not even mad at it. There is there is no more white privilege left in

his privilege sponge. He dry, I'm not mad at I'm I'm really not mad at it. Uh yeah. So one of the village elders who that that journalist Joshua Smith interviewed, said quote, I thought he would come by, introduce himself and explain what he was doing here. But he never did. He just showed up and started telling us what to do. And it worked, and it worked, and it worked well, and there was much crime to stop, but he got to play batman for a while. I don't even think

that girl told him there was some crime there. He just made that up, like my girlfriend. Oh god. John. So, now at this point, Dr at An Eisio, who's remember still trying to make medicine here, started worrying about John McAfee. Over the months they'd worked together, she'd noticed him hiring more and more armed men. She'd also noticed that his room at the compound was filmed with literal garbage bags of money and boxes of viagra and other unidentified pharmaceuticals.

She decided to leave the country and in two thousand twelve, when that Wired article was written, that's all anyone knew about the end of their working relationship. She just told Wired basically like I just I just left, you know. Uh. Four years later, in two thousands sixteen, Dr d Anisio talked to Annett Bernstein for a Showtime documentary on John mccafee's life. She gave a very different story than one that paints John McAfee not as a fun, wacky libertarian

cookie character, but as a monster. And we're going to play an exerpt from that right now. He would talk about how he could have people hurt or killed, and um, you know, honestly, I was. I was scared. I planned to leave, but I needed to figure out how to do it. You know. I went to talk to him. I sat there on the couch and I and I told him everything. I said. Look, I don't I don't like what you're doing. I am not getting anywhere with my work. I feel undermines, and um, how I missed

my family. I want to go home, and um, you know, had a headache. I was, I was crying so much. I I told him I had a headache, and and he he brought me. Um. He you know, he went into the other room and he brought me two pills and a glass of orange juice, and so I took them, I you know, and I took a sip of the orange juice and it tasted foul. It tasted bitter. Um. Such an idiot. I remember I made a joke about not being able to get good orange juice in a

place called Orange Walk, like I honestly. So, she claims that basically she blacked out after that point. Something was in the orange juice pretty clearly, and she has snatches of memory, and one of them is John mc if he standing over her naked um. She alleges that he raped her. It seems like a pretty credible allegation. Also doesn't seem I don't have a whole lot of trouble imagining John McAfee being a rapist after everything we've talked

about stockpiling BIA. So she was just trying to leave. She wass what I mean, the fact that she went off with this millionaire and to a compound to like try to do drug research, that was all crazy. But like this is the kind of crazy anyone you get him at the right point, with the right thing. If you're the type of person who leaves the country to go play guitar, chances are like, yeah you would, why

not taking a chance? And absolutely and she had gone, Okay, he didn't put in the money to build he said he was going to do. But like she came to you and said that she wanted to go home, Like that is just so disgusting, Like what a piece of ship. Yeah yeah, And this is a dark and terrible note to end our first episode, but it's the note that we're gonna end on in the next episode starts with murder. So buckle up, enjoy that, Lacy. You want to plug your plug doubles before we uh we roll off? Damn.

I need to dis is myself from that. Yeah, I know I should. I didn't know where to stick that, but I felt like the end. You know, Um, if you like the sentence of that poor woman is just the worst way to lead into any kind of pivot. That poor woman. If you're looking for a bed, if you like sad no, um, yeah, but shout out to her so sad um. I'm scam God. I do love scams, but I don't hurt people. Guys, let's swear. Yeah, good

nature scams. That's not me, but yeah, so look out for my podcast Scam Goddess, and you follow me on Twitter at DVA Lacey d I V A l A c I or on Instagram at DVA Lacey d I d A l A c I. How more updates there, And I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I Write out Kay. You can find this podcast on the internet Behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us on Instagram at Twitter at Bastards pod. You can buy T shirts, you buy cups, you can buy stickers.

You can buy the mummified hand of an Egyptian pharaoh, all on t public dot com, all branded UH with Behind the Bastards logos UH and special Mummy Fighting Witchcraft. Can buy it products