As if the tale wasn’t already strange enough, the tale of eccentric anti-virus tycoon and accused murderer John McAfee has taken yet another bizarre twist.
Last month, SmartCompany reported McAfee is a potential suspect in the murder of American expatiate Gregory Faull, who had reportedly filed a complaint against McAfee for “roguish behaviour”.
After making a fortune as an anti-virus developer during the 1980s, McAfee reportedly spent millions on building a 113 hectare yoga retreat in Colorado and invented a new pastime called “aerotrekking,” which involves flying light aircraft at very low altitudes over remote stretches of desert.
McAfee later moved from the US to a compound in Belize, reportedly hiring his own security guards and owning a wide array of weapons.
Following the move, he spent time on chat rooms and message boards posting about his plans to purify certain types of hallucinogenic drugs. McAfee became increasingly paranoid in the period leading up to the alleged murder, registering his computers under different names and changing IP addresses several times.
In the latest twist, late last week, unconfirmed reports surfaced that a man using a North Korean passport, under the name “John McAfee” had been arrested at the border of Mexico and Belize.
However, in the latest twist, the eccentric millionaire revealed that the man arrested was, in fact, a body double. According to NetworkWorld, McAfee claimed to be in the company of two journalists from Vice Magazine outside Belize, having left the country to place his partner, Sam, was in a safe position after fearing she was “in danger of capture”.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
