John McAfee, who built a fortune selling cybersecurity software has been indicted on charges of tax evasion by the Department of Justice (DOJ). He has been arrested in Spain and is awaiting extradition, the DOJ said.
The full indictment released today alleges that McAfee dodged taxes through various means, including using other people’s names — directing payments towards bank accounts, cryptocurrency accounts, real estate, a yacht, and another unnamed type of vehicle, none of which were in his own name.
McAfee is also being indicted for willfully failing to file tax returns from 2014 through 2018. If convicted, McAfee faces up to five years in prison for each of the five counts of tax evasion, and up to one year in prison for each of the five counts of failing to file a tax return.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has also sued McAfee for not disclosing that he was paid to promote initial coin offerings (ICOs) on Twitter from December 2018 to January 2018, despite allegedly being paid more than $23 million in Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency Ether to do so. (McAfee would later put a public price on his promotions of $105,000 per tweet.) McAfee’s bodyguard was also charged for his participation in the scheme.
