Part One: John McAfee Is Not Funny Anymore

In Episode 47, Robert is joined by Laci Mosley to discuss how John McAfee became a violent con man.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. Hey, what's scrambling my eggs? M Robert Evans. This
is behind the bastards. That's my new introduction. Sophie is
crawling under the desk, so overwhelmed with shame that she
can no longer sit upright. Uh, but there's no taking
it out, there's no editing it. I'm I'm sitting here

(00:20):
in the studio with my guest, Lacey Mosley. Lacy, how
are you doing? I'm doing good? Lacy. You are a comedian,
an actress, also deeply embarrassed in a scam. Godess, no,
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

(00:43):
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

(01:05):
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,

(01:28):
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

(01:49):
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.

(02:09):
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.

(02:34):
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.

(02:57):
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

(03:17):
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.

(03:37):
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

(03:58):
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,

(04:24):
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

(04:46):
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

(05:07):
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

(05:30):
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,

(05:52):
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

(06:16):
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.

(06:38):
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

(07:00):
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

(07:22):
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

(07:44):
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?

(08:04):
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

(08:25):
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.

(08:46):
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

(09:07):
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,

(09:29):
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.

(09:50):
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.

(10:11):
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.

(10:34):
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.

(10:57):
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

(11:19):
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

(11:42):
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,

(12:05):
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,

(12:25):
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,

(12:47):
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

(13:08):
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

(13:28):
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

(13:49):
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.

(14:13):
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

(14:33):
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

(14:54):
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

(15:15):
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.

(15:37):
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.

(15:58):
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,

(16:21):
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,

(16:44):
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.

(17:06):
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

(17:30):
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,

(17:53):
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

(18:14):
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

(18:34):
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

(18:57):
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

(19:17):
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?

(19:40):
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,

(20:01):
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,

(20:24):
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.

(20:47):
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

(21:09):
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

(21:30):
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

(21:51):
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,

(22:12):
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

(22:35):
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

(22:56):
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.

(23:18):
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

(23:41):
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

(24:03):
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,

(24:23):
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,

(24:45):
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

(25:07):
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

(25:27):
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

(25:50):
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

(26:12):
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

(26:34):
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

(26:54):
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

(27:15):
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

(27:38):
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

(27:59):
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

(28:21):
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.

(28:46):
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

(29:08):
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,

(29:30):
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

(29:52):
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

(30:12):
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

(30:34):
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

(30:55):
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

(31:18):
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

(31:38):
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

(32:00):
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,

(32:23):
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,

(32:44):
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

(33:04):
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

(33:27):
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

(33:49):
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,

(34:12):
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

(34:33):
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,

(34:55):
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,

(35:16):
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

(35:37):
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

(35:57):
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

(36:19):
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

(36:40):
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

(37:02):
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,

(37:25):
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

(37:46):
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

(38:07):
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

(38:28):
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.

(38:51):
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

(39:13):
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

(39:34):
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.

(39:54):
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,

(40:15):
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

(40:37):
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

(40:59):
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

(41:20):
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.

(41:41):
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,

(42:03):
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

(42:24):
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

(42:46):
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

(43:06):
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

(43:28):
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

(43:50):
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

(44:13):
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

(44:37):
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

(44:57):
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.

(45:20):
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,

(45:41):
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

(46:01):
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

(46:24):
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

(46:45):
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,

(47:07):
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

(47:29):
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

(47:50):
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

(48:11):
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

(48:32):
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

(48:55):
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

(49:16):
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

(49:37):
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

(49:57):
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

(50:18):
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

(50:39):
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

(50:59):
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

(51:21):
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.

(51:44):
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

(52:06):
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

(52:27):
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

(52:49):
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

(53:12):
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,

(53:35):
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

(53:56):
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

(54:17):
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

(54:38):
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

(54:59):
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.

(55:21):
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

(55:42):
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.

(56:04):
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

(56:27):
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

(56:47):
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.

(57:08):
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,

(57:30):
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.

(57:51):
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.

(58:12):
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,

(58:36):
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,

(58:56):
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

(59:18):
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

(59:38):
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,

(01:00:01):
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,

(01:00:23):
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

(01:00:51):
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

(01:01:11):
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

(01:01:32):
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.

(01:01:55):
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

(01:02:18):
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,

(01:02:40):
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

(01:03:01):
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,
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Behind the Bastards logos UH and special Mummy Fighting Witchcraft.

(01:03:23):
Can buy it products