Millionaire on the run: How the man who founded software giant McAfee lost his fortune and ended up hiding from police in Belize after they 'rousted him from the bed of a 17-year-old and shot his dog because he's running a meth lab'

John McAfee was once worth $100million but lost nearly all his fortune and moved to Central America in 2008



Belize security claim he had illegal weapons and drugs and that he was arrested with 17-year-old girl



In post on private messageboard, McAfee says he has not left his hideout for five days and only has three DVDs and an iPad - without a charger

Distributed world's first marketable anti-virus software from his home in California in the late 1980's.



Known to enjoy alternative therapies, new age teachings and yoga

Employed Wiccan witches to bang drums at the headquarters of his eponymous anti-virus software firm

Allegedly turned a blind eye to his employees using McAfee Associates first offices for sex games in the early 1990s.



Faces a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit in the U.S after 61-year-old man died flying an aircraft owned by one of his firms in 2006



He was the man who made millions by creating one of the world's most successful internet security firms.

John McAfee - co-founder of McAfee - had for many years enjoyed the lavish trappings of wealth afforded by his $100m fortune.

But, in an extraordinary fall from grace, the 66-year-old is today in hiding in Belize after his home was raided for allegedly harbouring illegal drugs and weapons and - according to authorities - running a 'meth lab'.

Lying low: McAfee, is pictured at his former home in Rodeo, New Mexico

The arrest is the culmination of a bizarre new chapter in the life of the former multimillionaire who fled the U.S. after the fortune he made from his internet security software was in danger of being wiped out by a series of lawsuits and the financial crash.

The tattooed tycoon - born in Britain and raised in the U.S. - had tried to build a new life by starting an antibiotics firm in the tiny Central American country and is rumoured to have set up home with a 17-year-old girl.

The age of consent in Belize is 16-years-old for both sexes.



But earlier this month his new venture fell apart when he was arrested because he - he claims - he refused to donate money to a local politician.

Away from everything: John Mcafee's beachfront compound in Belize burned down on May 16

This is the dog that was owned by McAfee that he claims Belize's Gang Suppression Unit shot earlier this year

Now he has resorted to protesting his innocence by posting on the internet from a secret location.



McAfee's arrest completes an astonishing turnaround in the life of a man who was once viewed as one of the great success stories of the technological age.



After his company suffered setbacks, the yoga lover moved to Belize in 2008 and then launched a bid to make antibiotics from jungle plants. As of 2009 his fortune, once valued at $100million, had fallen to $4million.

That year he finished liquidating his U.S. real estate holdings which included 280-acres in Colorado, a beachfront estate in Hawaii, properties in Arizona and Texas, and a ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico.



He had long since left the company that bore his name, having cashed out of the antivirus company that bore his name in 1994.



Pictured are some of the weapons that Belize's Gang Suppression Unit claim they recovered from McAfee's home. He is now wanted for murder

He has had a series of much-younger girlfriends and followed his passions, saying in 2007, 'Success for me is, Can you wake up in the morning and feel like a 12-year-old?'



But this week he revealed his current legal ordeal at the hands of security forces who shot dead his dog, seized his passport and left him handcuffed for 14 hours in the sun without food and water.

He was separated from his current girlfriend, who is rumoured to be 17-years-old.



They then placed him in a squalid prison cell where he had to sleep on the floor with four others, the technology sit e Gizmodo reported.

John McAfee has been a follower of alternative therapies and philosophies all his life and taught yoga after he sold his business

' Having spent one night already sleeping on the concrete floor of the Belize City jail I am not excited about the prospect of returning', Gizmodo quoted him as saying on a private messageboard.

Mr McAfee said there were no beds in prison and a milk carton served as a toilet for everybody - until a drunk entered the cell at 1am and kicked it over.

Revealing that he had not left his one-room hideout for five days, Mr McAfee posted that he had no cable or satellite TV, no books and just three DVDS - The Human Stain, Tierra and Naked.

He had an iPad but no charger, so was 'rationing' its use.

Whereas the device's remaining charge was at 21 per cent at the start of the post, he revealed it was down to only 17 per cent when he logged off.

Judy McAfee was John's wife and helped him launch his anti-software virus firm in the late 1980s

'For those of you who follow the news in Central America, you will know that I am in hiding in an undisclosed location in Belize,' said Mr McAfee.

'Hiding out is no fun. I've always wondered why people on the run turn themselves in in many cases.



'I now know the answer - boredom. '

In an interview with Belize's News 5 on May 2, Mr McAfee d escribed the raid on his home in Orange Walk, Belize City, two days before.

He said he was woken up at 6am by the sound of bullhorns.

'I went outside and saw about 30 GSU [ Belize's Gang Suppression Unit] in full uniform, fully dressed, automatic weapons, storming through the property and driveway.

'I went back inside, got some clothes on, I came out. I was told to put up my hands up against the wall as were eleven other people in the compound.

'It began, innocently enough, with my refusal to donate to the local political boss of the district where I lived in Orange Walk and I have given at least $2million in gifts to the police departments in Orange Walk, San Pedro, Belize City.'

The GSU said they found a cache of weapons at McAfee's property and that he did not have a licence to manufacture drugs.

In a statement, the GSU said: 'Present on the premises at the time were John McAfee, his girlfriend who is a 17-year-old Belizean girl and five security guards.

'During the search ten firearms - seven 12-gauge pump action shotguns, one 12-gauge single action shotgun, one Taurus nine-millimetre pistol and one nine-millimetre CZ pistol were found.'



Tropical: John McAfee, founder of the anti-virus software firm, moved to Belize in 2008

Five air rifles and 270 12-gauge cartridges were also found, officers said.

In the private message-board post seen by Gizmodo , Mr McAfee said the GSU have since issued additional charges 'but have not divulged what they might be'.

He added: 'My lawyers tell me there is absolutely nothing to worry about, so that makes me very worried.'

The Gizmodo site reported Mr McAfee as saying the original warrant produced when authorities searched his home claimed he was operating a meth lab.

John McAfee worked for Lockheed Martin in the mid-1980s before turning his hand to developing the world's first marketable anti-virus software in the late 1980s

Mr McAfee told the site: 'In the Third World such a thing is a serious crime - the drug companies don't particularly like people interfering with their business.



'But basically what I developed is a topical antiseptic. That's what they claimed was my meth lab.'

But Gizmodo said Belize government officials would not confirm that they had accused Mr McAfee of running a meth lab 'or even that there was a raid, for that matter'.



'We spent hours on the phone trying to find out what happened, bouncing from one police official to another.'

Eric Heyden, public affairs officer for the American Embassy in Belize, told Gizmodo: 'I don't have any general information about his case.

In the early 2000s John McAfee pioneered the invention of a new sport called aerotrekking out of his New Mexico property

'I am as perplexed and confused as you are as to why the Gang Suppression Unit would be taking action about a private American citizen.'



Mr McAfee grew up in England but moved to America as a child.

He graduated from Roanoke College in 1967 with a degree in mathematics and studied further mathematics at Virginia Tech until 1970.

As part of the electronics boom centred around California and Stanford University in particular, McAfee held down around a dozen different jobs in the area in the software industry.

He also set up an adult dating service called American Institute for Safe Sex Practices, which issued identification cards for people who tested HIV-negative.

It was during the mid 1980's that McAfee was working for Lockheed Corporation when he began designing his anti-virus software.

Part of John McAfee's home on Ambergris Caye, Belize

He developed antivirus computer programs and in 1989 started working full-time at his own company McAfee Associates, which he ran from his home in Santa Clara, California .

Operating out of his one-bedroom farmhouse on Cheeney street in Santa Clara, California, he promoted his new eponymous software with the helpd of shareware - offering it for free initially to individuals, but charging them and large companies licenses to continue using it.

By 1992, more than half of the Fortune 100 companies had purchased licenses to use the software.

McAfee's key helpers in his early days were his wife at the time Judy, who also worked as a flight attendant with United Airlines and his right-hand man Aryeh Goretsky, who still operates within Silicone Valley.

Bizarrely, as the company expanded to larger offices he employed three Wiccan witches to beat hand drums on the offices front lawn, a handful of employees regularly practiced sword fights and others rehearsed Shakespeare.

It is also rumoured that during these formative years, a group of employees began an office tournament to see who could have sex in different locations around the Santa Clara headquarters.

John McAfee, the founder of the anti-virus software company that bears his name is on the run in Belize after being accused of running a meth-lab

'It was meant to be very tongue-in-cheek,' said Chris Harget, a former product manager who declined to get involved with these activities.



Indeed, although he denied knowledge of that game, McAfee did encourage creativity.

'I didn't look down on anything as long as work got done,' said McAfee in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News from 2001.



'We had lots of fun.'

Riding the wave of his incredible initial success, McAfee became disillusioned with his company as it increased in size.

It is said that on his 1992 round-the-world show to pitch his initial public offering, the entrepreneur would dip into hotel lobby's and entertain passers-by with New Age compositions on the piano.

In 1994, he cashed in his share in his own company and moved to his secluded mansion in Woodland Park, Colorado, where he started the revolutionary Tribal Voice, a service which provided one of the first instant messaging services, predating Skype and Facebook by a decade.

Mr McAfee floated the company in New York in 1992 and had sold up completely by 1994 - making about £70m.

He later moved into property development and taught yoga.

One of the enthusiasts of the new sport was director Ang Lee (centre sitting), the director of 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' and he is shown the ropes by John McAfee (second left)

After Tribal Voice was sold for $17 in 1999, McAfee turned his attention to finding a different direction in his life, furthering his interests in yoga, jet skiing and developing his new sport, aerotrekking.



This involved flying small vehicles with large tarpaulin wingspans very low at 75-miles an hour close to the ground, which McAfee wanted to popularise as a national sport.

The millionaire bought a ranch in New Mexico and added another air-strip and gathered fellow trike enthusiasts to the property who called themselves 'Sky Gypsies'.

However, in late 2006, McAfee's nephew called Joel Gordon Bitow took a 61-year old passenger named Robert Gilson aerotrekking and fatally crashed.

A $5 million lawsuit was brought against McAfee by the family of Robert Gilson, claiming that Bitow was illegally serving as an instructor.

In fact, it is claimed that this wrongful death lawsuit was one of the precipitating factors in McAfee leaving the United States to set up his new life in Belize.

The lawsuit's status at this moment in time is unknown but it was filed at the Superior Court of Maricopa County, Arizona.

John McAfee is facing a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit in Arizona for the death in 2006 of a 61-year-old former Air Force veteran who died while using one of McAfee's aerotrekking craft

'I think he is trying to liquidate all property that could be used to collect a judgment, so that it's all beyond the reach of execution in the United States,' said the Gilson family attorney, Frank Fleming to Fastcompany.com

'So long as McAfee and the vast majority of his wealth remain in Belize, it's going to be very hard for the family of Robert Gilson to collect any judgment won against McAfee in court.



'McAfee's not as bright as he thinks he is.

'He thinks he's outsmarted all the lawyers and the judges and all the juries. It's not going to happen.'



It is debatable whether McAfee has lost as much of his money as he states.

His attitude towards the media is notoriously manipulative and he frequently states un-truth's and makes false statements to further his own aims.

However, his property liquidation, move to Belize and suffering during the 2008 financial crisis are documented.

Before he left his home in New Mexico, McAfee sold off a 280-acre estate in Woodland Park, Colorado, a 5-acre beachfront estate on Molokai, Hawaii; and other properties in Arizona and Texas.



Several were sold at auction, including the last to go, his ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico.

Working on a starting an antibiotics firm in the tiny Central American country of Belize, McAfee is rumoured to be seeing a 17-year-old girl

As he became a Belize resident, he could secure his remaining assets there, safe in the knowledge that the country would not recognise any court judgement passed down from a US judge.



Certainly, people who visited him on the island said he did not seem that impoverished, and that he had set up a high-speed ferry company, a rickshaw firm, a water sports facility and an internet company.

