John McAfee Tells World How He Fooled Cops and Escaped Belize

It looks like the long and winding road of the John McAfee saga is going to continue for at least a little longer. McAfee posted a detailed blog post about how he was able to elude Belizean authorities and sneak out of the country. From the article: "'It's visually interesting and it is mostly a happy story — in line with most Christmas stories,' he wrote. The former software executive describes an operation that was heavy in advance planning and trickery. He says he planted a lookalike ('my double — a man I have known for over 30 years and who years ago legally changed his name to John McAfee') and had him picked up by authorities in the northern Belize-Mexico border, while he and a group of friends and reporters loaded up a truck and headed in the opposite direction, to a southern town called Punta Gorda. With the news that he'd been arrested broadcasting on a local news station, McAfee figured that checkpoint security would relax."

Comments

whoa

[someone1234]

He must have been planning his escape for years!

Would /. please spare us ??

[Taco Cowboy]

Dunno about you, but I'm really sick and tired of yet another episode of the ensuing saga McAfee, the publicity whore !

Please have some heart, Slashdot !!

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[Bieeanda]

Please, yes. The man's a scummy asshat who hasn't been involved in the tech industry for years. It isn't like that ghastly business with Hans Reiser, where there was at least the excuse of handwringing over the fate of the file system he was developing.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[LordLucless]

I hate his software as much as the next Slashdot geek, and think he's nutty as a fruitcake, but he's hardly a publicity whore. Publicity whores don't vanish into south America for decades on end. Your comment reminds me of all the attacks on Julian Assange - it seems anyone who gets media attention for anything other than being a politician or a celebrity gets accused of publicity whoring.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If you don't like the Lord of the McAfee franchise, you can:

1. Vote the story down in the Submissions queue.
2. Simply ignore the story and don't read it.
3. Submit something more interesting yourself.
4. Have your double — a man your have known for over 30 years and who years ago legally changed his name to Taco Cowboy read Slashdot for you.

Hey, if I don't like the stories that get posted, I remind myself that with Slashdot, I get what I pay for it . . . and it's worth every penny of it . . .

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[flyneye]

Well, in Julians case, attention whoring seems to be saving his freedom and probably his life.
If it weren't for attention whores, there'd be no entertainment, no stage, no t.v., no radio and no girlies with daddy issues who wanna cuddle up to ol' fly.
Let's not make "attention whore" quite such an anathema.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[MagusSlurpy]

Head in his glove box is only circumstantial evidence. Did you see him put it in there?

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[JWSmythe]

I would think the witnesses seeing him hose out the blood from his car, or the fact that he somehow misplaced the passenger seat, would be pretty good clues.

But when he lead them to the body, that was a dead giveaway.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think the witnesses seeing him hose out the blood from his car

He was a long time sufferer of nose bleeds. Nothing remarkable about this at all.

or the fact that he somehow misplaced the passenger seat, would be pretty good clues.

Typical geek, always taking things apart and not always putting them back together. Maybe a bit absent minded too. Doesn't prove a thing.

But when he lead them to the body, that was a dead giveaway.

Clearly a latent psychic. Doesn't prove a thing.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[TheLink]

It's not so popular now due to vendor lock-in.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[turkeyfeathers]

And the new slashdot would send an investigative reporter to the Belize holding cell and hear out the double's story, and come out with a book called False Positive The Story of McAfee's Escape

Published by Packt, so naturally it would get a great front-page review on Slashdot. Win-win!

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[TheCarp]

> Can't tell if you're for real Anon

GP's 'Latent Psychic' crack wasn't a dead giveaway? wow, have you considered a job at the FBI or TSA?

> Compelling circumstantial evidence can also win cases

as can lies, misunderstandings, and judges who are out to get "those anarchist bastards" (as one judge was famously quoted as saying after an old and controversial case in my own city). Winning a case is not the same as proving anything, or settling the matter in everyones mind. You may be able to convict with less, but you wont convince everyone that its not a wrongful conviction with less.

On the other hand, leading the police directly to where you buried the body is, generally, a dead giveaway.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Incorrect, the criteria is "beyond a reasonable doubt". Very, very little can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. For instance, it's not beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was framed, and then coerced into confessing. It's possible. Heck, it's happened. But I don't think it's reasonable to think that's what happened in this case.

Since he did plead guilty, I imagine that at least he was under the impression that there was sufficient evidence to find him guilty, and the most likely reason for that is that he did in fact commit the crime. Unless you've got an argument that's more convincing than a confession that involves producing the hidden body, I fail to see why we should have let him go.

Re:Would /. please spare us ??

[AK Marc]

The parts we hate were written long after he sold out and moved on.

He sold out in 1996, or so as far as I can tell. Did you actually use virus scanners about that time, or are you just revisioning history? Norton was better then. McAfee AV was horrible on servers (where most used scanners then, before they were everywhere). It was a massive resource hog, and would prevent normal operation of the server. One of the reasons people put Linux boxes out in front of MS Exchange is that products like McAfee to scan user emails before delivery would simply kill the server. MS wouldn't support an Exchange server with AV on it because they were so bad. A separate server was a cheaper/easier solution than getting McAfee to work on an Exchange server. Worst software ever.

The only way you get away with saying such things is that likely so many here are new enough to IT that they didn't administer a server while McAfee owned McAfee to be able to form an opinion, or they see an AC with unsubstantiated opinion stated as fact and ignore it, as 99% of all slashdot comments are unsubstantiated opinion stated as fact, so everyone else just ignored you.

For his next trick...

[bistromath007]

He should legally change his name to Carmen Sandiego.

Such a wonderful person

[djl4570]

I don't give a flying fuck what he says. I want to know the facts, not the accusations and spin.
What really happened in Belize?
Did he kill anyone?
If yes, wouldn't it be righteous to allow the authorities to properly investigate the circumstances of the homicide?
My sense is that Slashdot has been in the tank for McAfee since this started.
I want the truth and the whole story.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[Ash Vince]

Exactly! I've had a hard time finding any real details beyond hyperbole. So many people are screaming guilty and scum, but I can't find many specific details to conclude anything. Can anyone enlighten?

The only details anyone apart from him knows is that his neighbour was shot dead. McAfee seems to believe that his neighbour was killed by a government death squad that was looking for him but got the wrong house so refused to even talk to the police investigating the shooting. The police view hiding from them as suspicious (lol, name a police officer who wouldn't) so are becoming more and more keen to talk to him.

The only way we will ever find out anything close to the truth is if the cops catch the killer without his help and he is proved innocent or if he gets extradited back to Belize and decides to plead guilty. Neither are that likely to my mind.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[Vintermann]

Did he kill anyone?

That's the important question. And I got to say, the more I hear of his antics (dopplegangers changing their name to his?) and novelty drug habits, the less inclined I am to give him the benefit of doubt on this one.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[rudy_wayne]

Did he kill anyone?

That's the important question. And I got to say, the more I hear of his antics (dopplegangers changing their name to his?) and novelty drug habits, the less inclined I am to give him the benefit of doubt on this one.

It will soon be revealed that he killed Hans Reiser's wife.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[gutnor]

He is a dodgy man living in a dodgy country in latina america. You need to take any news from either the government or McAfee with a spoonful of salt.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[eric_herm]

Or rather, that he was hans Reiser wife who faked her own death in order to prevent reiserfs4 to be integrated upstream, paid as a ex russian secret agent by a unnamed super villain ( take your pick between Google, Microsoft, Apple or anything, we will explain for the next conspiracy that they are all the same company in the end )

Re:Such a wonderful person

[Muad'Dave]

I want to know who killed Kennedy. And a pony.

I doubt whoever killed Kennedy also killed a pony.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[TheGratefulNet]

in latina america

I knew about the pussification of america, but I didn't know that it went that far.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[Tablizer]

ludicrously far fetched. The sort of government who send death squads are not exactly likely to be gently with a false McAfee...who deliberately aided and abetted

You are thinking like the middle class. Try it like this: "I'll give you 5 million if you pretend to be me and get the crap beat out of you for a year."

I suspect roughly 1/4 the population would go for such a deal.

Re:Such a wonderful person

[AK Marc]

The police want the truth too. He's wanted for questioning. He lived next door to someone who was murdered. He is a suspect until cleared, and maybe a material witness. The police have wanted nothing but to check with him about those things. He's done nothing but run and give excuses why he's running. If he weren't a criminal, why didn't he go to the US or UK embassies and invite the authorities in for questioning? The closest I could get to an answer to that is that he's a US tax evader, so, being a criminal facing lots of US jail time, he was avoiding anywhere with an extradition treaty with the US, until he was caught in Guatemala, which does extradite, and he's on his way to Miami now (or is in San Fran, or whatever). Turns out everyone avoiding capture ends up in the US eventually. They aren't avoiding the local charge, they are avoiding getting sent to the US.

But the US almost always gets them in the end. The Republicans complain about the New World Order, but were instrumental in putting it in place. The difference is that rather than submitting to a world government, the US has asserted itself to be the world government. But it's a New World Order none the less.

"I'm so clever..."

[mystyc]

Why is it that people who have evaded authorities find it irresistible to gloat about how "clever" they are to have outwitted cops. I get it, maybe eventually talk about it in an autobiography, but he may technically still be evading said authorities. He might as well say, "nanna nanna booboo, come and get me!".

Delusional

[Snjit]

This has gone beyond news to just soap opera drama that belongs on a bad trash news site, not ./

I don't expect top notch, confirmed journalism from any internet news site but this one is pure fantasy on the part of McAfee. Stop feeding this delusional, drug addled news whore. He hasn't done anything for technology since selling his business. Stop letting these "news" stories through to the front page.

Thanks

Re:Hey, John

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I could do the EXACT same thing.

Man,
I'M ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX!!

GTFO

[slashmydots]

I am going to be beyond pissed if the US doesn't extradite his dumb ass straight back to Belize.

Re:GTFO

[mu51c10rd]

It was odd to me as well. We do have an extradition treaty with Belize, so they could charge him and request him back. I'd like to see how he plans on dodging the FBI or Marshall's service.

Re:Hey, John

[plover]

All I could think of was "cool story, bro."