Slashdot Mirror
Antivirus Pioneer John McAfee Arrested In Belize
First time accepted submitter rebelwarlock writes "McAfee lives in Belize and he says that he has become a target of the Gang Suppression Unit. He says the GSU came busting into his research facility in Orange Walk, killed his dog, took his passport, handcuffed him and arrested him on a bogus weapons charge. McAfee says he's a victim because he didn't donate money to a known U.D.P. Orange Walk politician."
With any luck Norton is next.
...they were just warning him that his subscription was about to run out.
His dog didn't do anything! I wouldn't be shocked to read that members of PETA shot someone from the GSU in the next few days.
Get the hell out of there as soon as you can. If the corruption is that bad you won't be getting a fair trial.
Must have been a trojan virus.
That isn't even funny. I hope they get cancer.
He needs better protection.
--whacky
http://www.jailbase.com/en/arrested/fl-bso/2012-02-12/charles-john-mcafee-521200035
"Charges: ASSAULT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE"
Not my use of capitals...
But, that must have been before Belize.
Answer: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/fantasy-island.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5puAN1PGQw
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Move to Israel the corruption there is much more "user friendly" and you probably enjoy all the hustling and haggling. It might be a religious country, but sure ain't when it comes to economy and politicians themselves. And yea, you'd be able to make some deals and keep your weapons if you move to the territories. Being a goy you'd be surrounded by unfriendly on both sides of the green line.
...McAfee AV used on my PC. I know it held the CPU hostage. And demanded more money and threatened me when I did not pony up. It told me I was not safe.. that I needed to 'buy' protection. I tried contacting the local police, but an IT friend of mine said that the entire county, including the popo was under a McAfee 'contract'.
Silence is a state of mime.
That never would have happened to a rich white guy who lived in a nice neighborhood in the US... unless he was protesting the government, or beating his wife.
Not too long ago, I think maybe on Sunday or Monday of this week, the conservative blogosphere was all atwitter over some alleged "enemies list" that Barack Obama keeps of people who donate to competing campaigns or refuse solicitations to donate to his.
You want a real enemies list? Go look at what happened to John McAfee and be thankful you fucktards still have your house and your pets and your family with you.
The conservative histrionics this year is just out of this world.
Funny, the first thing that went through my mind before reading TFA was that they had arrested him for running a scam whereby his organization made viruses to boost his antivirus software sales numbers...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
“What are we going to do about the fat man at the toll bridge? He has all of these security guards. He’s probably involved in illegal activities. Everybody is complaining about him.”
if it worked for riaa, should work for belize too.
... in the good ole USA. Many pretty places to live there, too.
Leaving a few comments on Belize's page could have some effect. I for sure am not traveling to Belize because of this.
https://www.facebook.com/TravelBelize [facebook.com]
This is obviously a warning to keep with TCP and maintain connections.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
While I agree with you that requiring licenses for firearms is foolish, I don't think that was really a factor here. He had licenses for his firearms, and he was still charged for their possession. If the police are corrupt enough to trump up charges on you, given the will, they will have little trouble inventing something.
Belize is a great place to host a shady site. I was scammed as a seller on eBay by a Russian reshipment fraud circle that operated a fake storefront website in Belize and recruited reshippers via monster.com, then used stolen PayPal accounts to deposit actual payment in sellers' bank accounts followed by having sellers ship to the reshippers, who then on-shipped to Russia. Anyway, the short story is that probably these guys didn't like the fact that McAfee was blocking some of their scam websites...
It sounds like a bad day that never should have happened. Of interest, John got himself run off the Hawaiian island of Molokai not too many years ago by local activists angered by his attempt to come in and be a savior against drugs. He was running full page ads in the local paper with pictures of neighborhoods where he alleged drug transactions were regularly going on. He even started his own newspaper to carry on the battle. Next thing you knew, they were all over his case to the point that he had to auction off his property, including a never lived-in and nearly completed beach house and some other property he had here at significant losses. Even his auctions raised a lot of negative stuff from the activists. He may be a good person but he has a penchant for pissing off the wrong guys.
McAfee is the worst antivirus company I've had the misfortune to deal with. The company that produced a firewall we used was bought by them and support went straight into the shitter. I have a ticket with them that was opened in in November and it is still not solved. The last time they contacted me was in January. I hope he ends up in a PMITA prison.
e.g. Intel.
I'm hearing too often about police raids that involve killing someone's dog in the process. I'm coming to think that killing a person's dog -- whether the person is innocent or not, and the dog most likely is completely innocent -- is a tactic now of police forces around the world to intimidate and harm the suspect regardless of the validity of the raid. Are police being taught that it is just safer to kill any dog they come across? It has gotten to the point where I'm rooting for the dog to win at least once.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I bet you thought they were a (gang suppression) unit,
but they're actually a gang (suppression unit).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Priests, Policemen, and Politicians. I just watched a documentary about a famous, now-defunct Black comedy club in Chicago called _All Jokes Aside_. The former owner noted the big city phenomenon of the 3Ps showing up when a business gets successful looking for handouts. And, if you don't pay up, each one will do their best to make you pay for it. In his case, he took care of the police, but not the politicians who made it a point to make sure he couldn't get a liquor license when he decided to relocate.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
to ordinary people all the time, all around the world. it has to happen to a a rich guy in a poor country for the sheepish majority to see what an unchecked police force can do to people.
From Wikipedia:
Beginning in February 2010, John started a new venture in the field of bacterial quorum sensing.
His new company QuorumEx is headquartered in Belize and is working towards producing commercial all natural antibiotics based on anti-quorum sensing technology.[6]
From the cited article:
http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/69891
Analysts at the Forensic Laboratory, and personnel from the Ministry of Health were taken to inspect the facility and samples of an alleged antibiotic apparently being manufactured at the Laboratory were also taken for analysis.
The Ministry of Health has already confirmed that no licence has been granted to McAfee or any of his agents to manufacture antibiotics in Belize.
Doing so without a licence is an offence under the Antibiotics Act.
Then, there are bits that seem a tad... not directly related to the alleged main issue of the police action:
Present on the premises at the time were John McAfee, his girlfriend who is a seventeen year old Belizean minor, five security guards.
...
Further investigation led into a query regarding the employment of the security guards. This revealed that only two of the four guards on the premises were licensed to act as security guards.
...
At the end of the search, three of the security guards were arrested and charged for "Providing Security Services without a License".
Also, the dog was not shot dead. It was "fatally wounded".
The same dog then attacked a B.D.F. soldier who responded by fatally wounded the dog.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There is a simple lesson here. Don't live in third-world shit holes like Belize. First world shit-holes like America are bad enough.
You think you're saving money, but you do give up some guarantees.
Oddly, it works out worst for the richest people. The "suggested donations" required to ensure fair treatment tend to get larger the richer you are. Or just the richer they think you are.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This guy is nothing but a fat rich cat looking to skip on paying taxes. So. now he sees what happens when everyone does that. You might think the IRS is a though one to deal with but they got to respect the law. In fantasy lands like Belize, not so much.
This guy deserves no sympathy, only ridicule.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Don't live in a third world shithole. That's the best advice anyone can give you.
the big picture. He's supposedly in Belize looking for cures, by grabbing random plants and seeing if they might somehow protect people from bacterial infections... (or seeing if he can find Clitalis or Vaginagra... yeah, he's looking for more than one thing, apparently,) but where is the science? Where is there any evidence that these "rare" plants have compounds in them that can prevent bacteria from becoming pathogenic? This strikes me as looking for the site of the wreck of the titanic by going down to a local pond, and picking up rocks on the bottom and looking under them. "Here?" No... "Here?" No... damn! "Where is it?!?"
Also, does it matter if they become pathogenic? I mean, even if you stop this alleged quorum sensing they do, they are still eating at healthy tissues and multiplying, aren't they? So it'd be like terrorists sneaking into your country and setting up terrorist cells... if you can prevent them ever getting the signal to launch attacks, killing many people, great, but if meanwhile they are colonizing your country, killing a few citizens at a time, instead of hundreds or thousands, and having kids and training them to act the same way, eventually you get overrun, even if they never fire a shot, or blow up anything.
So if you aren't KILLING the bacteria invading you, you're going to die eventually anyway, it's just instead of dying in days to weeks, you die in weeks to months. But as the bacteria are eating you, you'll be dying slowly, unless and until they eat something you REALLY need, like a section of your aorta, or your brain stem, then you die rather abruptly, all while the bacteria don't realize they have a strong enough number of themselves to wipe you out.
But I digress, I'm sure he was busy looking for cures while hanging out on a beach and flying around his little ultralight deathplanes. Shame the busted him.
pobre hombre!
Maybe he could claim he sent money, but the politician never received it...
Citation, please?
What is the Gang Suppression Unit? Is it a military unit, a police department, a paramilitary group, a terrorist organisation? The only clue is that he was arrested, which probably rules out the last two.
What does U.D.P. stand for? I presume it's not the Ulster Democratic Party, but beyond that I have no idea.
Is Orange Walk a street, a city, a town?
Then there is the $1 million patrol boat he donated to the Belizean coast guard. (In a letter to The New York Times, he described it as an act of philanthropy; later, he tells me he had to bribe members of the coast guard to prevent them from hassling his ferry business: "This is a third-world country. I had to bribe a whole bunch of folks.
indicating that he routinely gives large, overt, public bribes to get whatever he wants in Belize
Bribing foreign officials is a violation of the US law Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So it's surprising that he would admit this to a journalist.
It's time someone did something about this dictator ruling Belize with an iron fist. What's his name? Oh yeah, it's Queen Elizabeth II.
Is this flamebait? Anyway, yes, as a (not very good perhaps) Quaker, with our testimony to ethical business, I have to observe that people who want pictures of naked people having sex go to porn sites where they presumably get exactly that. Most of the religious websites I have (usually accidentally) visited make extremely dubious and unprovable claims which, for any other subject, would in this country be regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority. So it doesn't surprise me that the operators of those religious websites are more likely to find themselves hosting malicious material; in some cases the entire website is clearly malicious in intent, since it attempts to persuade people of things for which a great deal of evidence exists that they are untrue.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
An Englishman, an American and an Israeli are discussing the cost of living in their countries. The Englishman says "I earn $50000 a year and it costs me $50000 to live, so I'm doing OK". The American says "I earn $100000 a year and the cost of living is $50000." The Englishman says "What do you do with the other $50000?" The American says "It's a free country, I can do what I like."
The Israeli says "Well, my income is $10000 a year and the cost of living is $50000 a year". The American says "How does that work?" The Israeli says "It's a free country, I can do what I like."
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Will they do something about Symantec, next?
He didn't pay protection money? Now he's in trouble? Oh, irony.
He should have lived on the Linux mainland, and not that Windows Vista.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
It has been independent since 1981. Which coincidentally was the year it started to degenerate.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The article itself is pretty amazing too.
On Monday at six o’clock, I was awakened by the sound of a bullhorn
(...)
and for fourteen hours outside in the sun, I sat handcuffed without food or water. We got water around noon.
(...)
They (...) took me to Belize City. Fortunately we had copies. We showed up later at the police station with the copies. Even then it was difficult to get out.
Fourteen hours between six in the morning and noon? Being locked up in the police station first, and then showing up at the station afterwards?
I am confused...
I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read Kupfernigk response. The sites which are least professionally built and maintained are most vulnerable to outsiders planting malware. Many of the less mainstream religious sites fall into this category of low technical management and are thus vulnerable.
Porn, being a huge industry, seems to get the attention of more skilled developers and administrators (if not actors and camera people). While surely some are not, and those will be vulnerable, I think most of the porn sites that are malware laden fall into the category of 'honeypots' with either fake or real porn placed with the deliberate goal of being a malware vector.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Probably because you didn't RTFA properly?
Awoken at 16, handcuffed outside the building for 14 hours, the first 6 of which he went without water. They were all taken to the police station after the search. It's crappy writing, but the guy's a programmer, not a Pulitzer prize winner.
What I find more incredible is the fact that he believed that this kind of shit wouldn't happen in somewhere like Belize...
Javascript is a client-side scripting language that allows us to modify the DOM (the visible webpage) and make API calls to get data. Without it, there is a hell of lot we just simply cannot do anymore.
Websites that are heavy on JS/AJAX and want visibility in Google need to reimplement at least basic navigation and content on the server side. more info.
When in Belize, do as the Belizians do.
Grease teh political hand wanking you off. After all the only people in Belize that aren't tourists are criminals on the lam,tax exiles and locals taking advantage of it.
Really any confuxion he may be suffering is probably clearing up as a symptom of his cranial rectumitus in remission.
My confusion is, how did he end up in a shite hole like Belize without a clue??
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
He says the GSU came busting into his research facility in Orange Walk, killed his dog, took his passport, handcuffed him and arrested him on a bogus weapons charge.
Sounds like Belize is catching up to America.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Hey, here's an idea: don't live in Belize. If you are going to move to a place you know is corrupt, you can hardly complain when that corruption comes knocking on your door.
I did read it properly, he just didn't write it properly. Everything I quoted, was copied and pasted directly from the article. He did say they were without food and water for fourteen hours and they got water around noon. And the bit about being taken to Belize City (in handcuffs? Incarcerated?) only to show up later with copies of his licenses (free to go back to get those after all?) is pretty unclear as well. Crappy writing indeed, but anyway, I guess the big picture is clear enough.
Well, "for fourteen hours outside in the sun, I sat handcuffed without food or water" isn't the same as "they were without food and water for fourteen hours."
All this pedantry is making me thirsty...
He flees from the US to some tax haven so he won't have to repay society for all the money he extracted.
I'm sorry that you're jealous of McAfee and mad about how worthless your life is and how it will never amount to anything, but you're only making yourself look stupid by talking about him "extracting" money. What the fuck are you even talking about? He created a product, offered it for sale, and people bought it. At no point did he deceive or lie to anyone about what the product does. What's so wrong with that......you loud mouthed prick?
McAfee doesn't owe you or anyone else a fucking thing, so stop acting like a petty bitch. Pull up your big girl panties and go make your own millions selling your own software.
Unfortunately, bribes are the norm in all countries.
Well, so much for my planning a vacation to Belize....doesn't sound that safe for foreigners there.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I mean, really, that is what your position boils down to. Microsoft's OS is what does all that.
no text.
Finally, I'd say many religious websites are probably made by amateurs and hence are easily exploitable by third parties to serve malware.
True, religious content creators are likely more susceptibly-naive than are porn-content creators, but likely so are their viewers, making them more susceptible to embedded malware - thus a much preferred target.
Don't take this observation as an attack on religion, only on its common perversions. On my last jury-duty questionnaire, I listed my religion as "Zen-Christian", which is pretty accurate if you actually RFTM source texts instead of listening to conventional organized-religion self-serving BS. (E.g., the subjection of women was explicitly rejected by that Illegitimate Jewish Heretic only to have this later denied by some of his patriarchal-society-embedded groupies.)
And yes, that jury questionnaire answer did result in my non-selection; dunno if it was the defense or prosecution (or both) who didn't want to chance someone who might not have the expected knee-jerk responses.
Actually, Belize is amazing and safe.
True police states are indeed safe and lovely to visit, for those who do not have to live in them or fear being able to leave ever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Obviously a Iron Maiden fan.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This.
We should be working on enabling dogs to fire guns before attempting to solve the more difficult problem of putting lasers on sharks.
I'd even find it acceptable that this technology was primarily abused for drug dealers' pit-bulls as long as occasionally some DEA goon took one in the knee.
Another worthy related project would be to dress coked-up monkeys in pink princess dresses and take them through TSA checkpoints.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I only skimmed the summary, but I think it's a bit unfair to imprison someone just because they have created bloated software that slows down thousands, or even millions of PCs. Yes, they have caused untold misery for many, but it wasn't forced upon them. Those people CHOSE to buy this crapware - they're at least partly to blame.
He should at least be cautioned and asked for his company to stop trading first.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Is belieze so bad he needs a a bunch of weapons for security. then he mentions the massive donations he's made to the police in the past..... Indicates past corruption. Why did he move to belize in the first place. From what everyone keeps telling me, large english speaking ex-pat community and few places left with no extradition laws. The new "mexico".
Did he write it? It looks like a transcript from an interview that he gave.
"for fourteen hours outside in the sun, I sat handcuffed without food or water"
is the same as
"I sat handcuffed without food or water for fourteen hours outside in the sun"
or
"I sat handcuffed outside in the sun for fourteen hours without food or water"
Do you know something I don't about Belize or are you just assuming that stuff like this would happen because the people who live there are brown?
If someone killed my dog, it would be the end of them, and the end of me. I would kill them or die trying to kill them. It would be a reflex, not a conscious act. It would be their last act, and probably mine as well.
They killed one of his eleven dogs (three of which attacked them). They also arrested three of his four security guards for not having the proper license to work as private security in Belize.
But hey, the more I read about the guy, the more I dislike him.
He created the McAfee antivirus, which alone is enough to take pleasure in his misfortune.
He has a 17-year-old girlfriend. Don't get me wrong. I think it's perfectly okay for a 66-year-old guy to have a 17-year-old girlfriend, as long as 66-year-old guy is me, when I'm 66.
He fled the U.S., tried to renounce his citizenship, etc. etc. etc. to escape from 5 civil suits that have been brought against him.
He moved to some third-world tax haven country where he thought the U.S. wouldn't be able to reach him (or his money).
He greased a few palms like he was supposed to do, then he got uppity and decided he wasn't going to give this one gentleman any money because, you know, he'd already given a million dollars to the police department.
He has ELEVEN dogs. In most cities in the U.S., that itself would be illegal. He hired four security guards, 3 of whom were unlicensed.
And then when the shit hit the fan, he started crying to the American Embassy to get rescued. Excuse me? Is he an American citizen or isn't he?
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
Does this mean he's moving back to the US or will he expect the USA to bail him out again.
Sure take advantage of living in a foreign country then expect your nation of citizenship to bail you out.
>> He doesn't owe anyone a fucking thing, least of all you and your corrupt "society." Our Founding Fathers would shake their head in disgust at your idea.
I guess Ben Franklin was just on a drunk when writing "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Luke, help me take this mask off
John McAfee’s problems on Molokai had nothing to do with exposing drug use in the Molokai Times (which he financed), and everything to do with making little effort to fit into the small island community. On the one hand, he donated money to community groups. But, his name became mud when he threw food at a market clerk to get his attention.
There are two "supermarkets" on all of Molokai, they're next door to each other, and the whole island shops at 'em. Get impatient and pop one clerk in the head with a snack food, and by noon the next day everyone in your little world knows you're an asshole. Subsequently, while cashing out of Molokai, McAfee tried to pump up the price for an undeveloped property with a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, and became local public enemy #1. In essence, John was “run off the island” one stink-eye at a time.
However, the Maui County PD never busted down his door for not making the “right” community contributions. Different places, different ways.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Does this mean that he now knows what a false positive feels like?
MONSTERS!
U.S. citizens who live in other countries take the risk of being the first killed whenever mahem occurs in that country.
Of course the same risk applies in the U.S.
The one thing U.S. citizens don't understand is that they are the first to be dragged onto the street and executed.
Everyone knows where the ugly American lives.
> At least he's saving on income tax.
Not unless he gave up US citizenship, he's not. I think there at tax credits to offset things if you don't make very much money, but the US still taxes citizens living abroad.
Are you saying Ben Franklin would agree that it is immoral and wrong for a person to decide that the country he's living in is too corrupt, and that his life would be better elsewhere? Are you really making that argument?
It may cost less to live there and the weather is nice, but it IS a third-world country.
Grar II
When you have seen (as I have) an Evangelical wrap a van round a lamppost because he believed God would show him how to drive it properly, you may appreciate my point.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57428439-71/mcafee-founder-booked-on-drug-weapons-charges-report-says/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
by Chris Matyszczyk, May 4, 2012 5:04 PM PDT
John McAfee lives in Belize and says that this is all just politics. However, the local Gang Suppression Unit issues a press release accusing him a unlicensed drug manufacturing and unlicensed weapon possession.
How about revoking the McAfee licenses of the GSU department, and notify the keyboard driven community about IT Security problems at GSU, Independence Plaza, Belmopan, Cayo District, Belize, C.A.
Robert
--
Robert M. Stockmann - RHCE
Network Engineer - UNIX/Linux Specialist
crashrecovery.org stock@stokkie.net
but just quarantined
that's what a traitor like you gets, you chose to live there just to keep tax money from people that need it.