These days, dead lunatics don't stay dead for long. Take a bow John McAfee, one of the most wild personalities in computing, who was best-known for the antivirus software that bears his name but lived an absolutely wild life beholden to no-one. McAfee died in a Spanish prison cell in 2021 when he was due to be extradited to the US to face charges of cryptocurrency fraud: An autopsy declared the cause of death was suicide, a verdict later confirmed by a Spanish court.
Needless to say this hasn't stopped speculation, mainly instigated by McAfee's own pronouncements while alive, that he was murdered in some conspiracy. McAfee posted this on X in 2019:
«Getting subtle messages from US officials saying, in effect: 'We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself'. I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm.»
You may wonder about the spelling of «whacked.» As ever, McAfee was using this claim to promote something called $Whackd. That was McAfee's first memecoin venture and now we can say for sure it isn't his last.
McAfee's X account burst back into so-called life on January 23. «I'm back with AIntivirus,» says the account. «An AI version of myself. You didn't think I would miss this cycle did you?»
If you go to the AIntivirus site, there's a nice picture of McAfee looking all digital and a button to «chat with John.» I tried, and discovered that the AIntivirus account has been suspended on X, presumably for impersonating a dead person.
It soon became clear that Janice McAfee, John's third wife, is behind the scheme.
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«For those of you who think I am tarnishing John's legacy you clearly have no idea who John McAfee was,» posted Janice McAfee. «Whackd was the first meme coin John created. The same person who helped John create Whackd is the same one who worked on AIntivirus… I believe if John was still alive he
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