Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 1001 posts

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#611

Post by azernik »

Buttons840 wrote: post #297
neom wrote: post #66

I met John in an Atlanta airport lounge years ago[1]. I recognized him immediately as I've always admired him, and I decided to go up to him and tell him as much. He invited me to sit down, and told him about when I was a teenager in the 90s learning about tech entrepreneurs at the time, I always thought he was pretty cool and had good ideas. I told him I respected him, and that I was sure he'd lived an incredible li…

When you say he was "sloshed" do you mean he was drunk? Or do you mean he was very pleased with your praise?

Huh. Never heard that latter usage. Where are you from? (For regional dialect purposes.)

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#612

Post by twelve40 »

et-al wrote: post #31

Can someone explain why McAfee had decamped to Belize in the first place and started a life on the lam? Wikipedia is surprisingly sparse here. Edit - in 2012 he was the prime suspect to the killing of his neighbor as mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27609243

someone posted a nice story in a different thread - before he started going really crazy with the lab and stuff, it looks like he first wanted to get away from a couple of pending lawsuits in the States:

"He was already facing a suit from a man who had tripped on his property in New Mexico. Another suit alleged that he was responsible for the death of someone who crashed during a lesson at a flight school McAfee had founded. He figured that if he were out of the country, he'd be less of a target. And he knew that, should he lose a case, it would be harder for the plaintiffs to collect money if he lived overseas." https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-john-mcafees-last-stand/

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#613

Post by amznthrwaway »

rcurry wrote: post #513
tclancy wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure. But do it for poor people first. There are a million people without millions suffering from similar treatment in the US.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it. I also agree with you. What I’m emphasizing is that our government prefers to go after weak targets. Not sure why you are being downvoted, you make a good point.

We should dramatically step up funding of the IRS so that they can obtain revenue from harder targets as well.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#614

Post by azernik »

jb775 wrote: post #383
gkoberger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, he very likely killed his neighbor in 2012... so I feel like "colorful" undermines how much of a monster he's been for over a decade.

Guilty until proven innocent?

That's a legal standard, not a social or historical one.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#615

Post by [deleted] »

gizdan wrote: post #489
rcurry wrote: post #470

The sad thing is that our government seems to make a point of screwing with kooks. I don’t care if McAffee owed some taxes - leave the guy alone, he’s obviously unstable, has major problems with drug and alcohol addiction and all they can do is try to bring him even lower. Poor guy had major problems even before the “heroes” of the FBI or the IRS or whatever started screwing with him. Let the poor guy ride off into t…

> I don’t care if McAffee owed some taxes - leave the guy alone, he's obviously unstable This is ridiculous. Okay so let's leave all the rich people alone who claim they are unstable. McAfee made millions, from what I understand, he paid little taxes on that. That's stupid. I don't care how unstable you are, or how good you are donating your "fair share". You're still not excused from paying your taxes.

[deleted]

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#616

Post by magicalhippo »

rOOb85 wrote: post #553
G3rn0ti wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison time here in Germany is limited to 15 years at max — independent on the number of crimes. People imprisoned for violent crimes may stay there for their whole life if they pose an ongoing threat to public safety.

- Prison time here in Germany is limited to 15 years at max - People imprisoned for violent crimes may stay there for their whole life if they pose an ongoing threat to public safety. So... Germany DOES have a life sentence. Kinda misleading to state it doesn't.

Not sure about Germany, but here in Norway we have prison sentence with a max of 21 years which is a punishment.

However we also have "forvaring", or detention, which is locking someone up to protect the public.

If you're sentenced to "forvaring", you're not let go at the end. Instead a commission will review your case and behavior, and determine if the "forvaring" needs to be extended or not. So while you can't get more than 11 years (IIRC) at a time, the sentence can be extended indefinitely.

The important point is that "forvaring" isn't mean to be a punishment, although I assume it might certainly feel like it. It's meant to protect the public from a dangerous individual.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#617

Post by FireBeyond »

rcurry wrote: post #470

The sad thing is that our government seems to make a point of screwing with kooks. I don’t care if McAffee owed some taxes - leave the guy alone, he’s obviously unstable, has major problems with drug and alcohol addiction and all they can do is try to bring him even lower. Poor guy had major problems even before the “heroes” of the FBI or the IRS or whatever started screwing with him. Let the poor guy ride off into t…

You know, the FBI, the IRS... or the family of the guy he most likely had murdered in Belize for poisoning his aggressive dogs? (Not fatally, the guy gave them something that made them sick, McAfee decided to shoot them, and mysteriously, the next day, the guy was found with a bullet in the back of his head, and evidence of electro-torture to the face and genitals.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#618

Post by hartator »

hugi wrote: post #529
to1y wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent poster meant let's not make him look like a loon and hound him relentlessly because of it.

But he was a loon and a thief/tax cheat

Was he? He was accused of not reporting potential cryto gains from talking about some cryptos. But if it didn’t realized any gains, he really didn’t have anything to report.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#619

Post by threwawasy1228 »

mrtksn wrote: post #99
gkoberger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, he very likely killed his neighbor in 2012... so I feel like "colorful" undermines how much of a monster he's been for over a decade.

If you are rich enough you are eccentric and colorful.

I don't think it has as much to do with wealth as it has to do with how interesting/accomplished the person is, the more slack we give them culturally. The more boring/ordinary a person is, the less slack we give them in western culture. A poor person whose life has interesting or compelling elements to it also seem to get a ton of slack culturally for crimes.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#620

Post by Mirioron »

dontblink wrote: post #423
ufmace wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timing does make me suspicious. I'm generally willing to believe he was "suicided" by some shadowy conspiracy. But if that's what happened, why would they do it on the day his extradition was approved? If our secret ninja assassins wanted to take him out because he Knew Too Much or whatever, they could do that any old time. Why do it on the day his extradition was approved instead of some random day 6 months ago…

Or they could only get too him in a Spanish prison and they ran out of time.

Wouldn't be unusual for the US. Gitmo is specifically not on US soil to avoid dealing with US laws.
Post reply on HN