Anyone looking for a person who embodies the madness of the ICO hype of 2017 will find John MCAFEE (read his Wikipedia entry). The US tech entrepreneur is a colorful and crazy dog. He became known in the 1980s as a cybersecurity pioneer through his anti-virus software. He sold the company to Intel in 1994. McAfee’s wealth peaked in 2007 at some $100 million but he had to record substantial losses with bad investments. To MCAFEE the ICO hype was a highly welcomed new source of money at the expense of naive investors.
Drugs, murder, weapons and sexual abuse
MCAFEE is a man of extremes, has a loose moral attitude and can justifiably be called crazy. Some call him eccentric which gives his misbehavior a positive connotation. In 2009, MCAFEE decided to move to Belize where he was arrested in 2012 for drug production and illicit possession of weapons but released again without charge. The authorities in Belize have suspected MCAFEE of shooting his neighbor, also an emigrated US citizen. He is also said to have sexually attacked his former business partner. McAfee fled Belize when he was sought for questioning concerning the murder.
He arrived in Guatemala where he was arrested for illegally entering the country. According to his own statements, he escaped extradition to Belize by pretending to have had a heart attack. He was extradited to the United States where he was arrested again in 2015 for driving under the influence of drugs. John MCAFEE attributes the reports about his activities in Belize to the fact that the country is a banana republic where such fake stories can be bought. Everything would have stunk and lied. He claims that the Belize government was after him, because he would not pay bribes, and that the murder case was somehow part of that plot.
The extraordinary life of John MCAFEE also seems to fascinate Hollywood. A movie titled “King of the Jungle” is supposed to come into the cinemas. Originally Johnny DEPP was traded for the role of John MCAFEE but now it’s the former Batman actor Michael KEATON.
Pump and Dump with Tokens
He attracted attention in the ICO hype by selling himself and his social media followers to ICO projects. He, too, was one of the directors of the FOMO play predicting a $ 1 million price for Bitcoin (BTC) by the end of 2020. “If not, I will eat my d–k on national television,” he proclaimed. This was the guy the crypto-scene was looking for – an eccentric outlaw.
John MACAFFE and his team have sold one or two tweets and have lost a few words about the respective ICO project. Allegedly he demanded up to USD 500,000 per tweet and explained his
“Obviously, people feel that it is worth it. Statistically, each tweet averages over $3 million in revenue for my clients – a 600% return.”
The ICO projects were standing in line until the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) put an end to this and warned MCAFEE. For this, he gave the SEC a slander.
Due to SEC threats, I am no longer working with ICOs nor am I recommending them, and those doing ICOs can all look forward to arrest. It is unjust but it is reality. I am writing an article on an equivalent alternative to ICOs which the SEC cannot touch. Please have Patience.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 19, 2018
Evidently, MCAFEE still is available for European ICO schemes. Just recently, was last seen on Twitter with the notorious ENVION anchorman Martin LAURENT. Following ENVION’s ICO disaster with 30,000 cheated investors, Martin LAURENT and the ENVION team around Michael LUCKOW are organizing a new ICO with RISE ECO. Apparently with the friendly support of the famous “Bump and Dump” artist John MCAFEE.
The next #ICO scam? Laurent Martin, #Envion misleader with shillmaster McAffee, posing for @RiseGlobalTech. Promising another dividend paying security token with lifelong passive income. Instead Envion investors lost 95% as of now. pic.twitter.com/KTk64q5rMC
— Envion Watch (@EnvionWatch) September 10, 2018
Looking back we know that more than 90% of the ICO’s were just “pump and dump” schemes with the aim of ripping off investors by issuing worthless cryptographic tokens. In Europe, the ENVION ICO stands for this with some USD 100 million raised from more than 30,000 investors. Due to a dispute between the ENVION shareholders, the project is dead and the investors’ funds vanished into the ENVION shareholders’ wallets.
In the legal and regulatory vacuum of the 2017/18 ICO hype, there was little to fear for the scam artists. Anything was possible, it was FOMO time. All you had to do was attract the attention of the ICO investors. The perfect task for John MCAFEE, who made a lot of money promoting ICO projects. It is also easy to argue that John MCAFEE‘s participation in an ICO is a strong indication of a scam project.
The Court Call
It has now become known that a Florida court will hold John MCAFFE responsible for the murder of his neighbor in Belize. A lawsuit filed in Florida by the murdered man’s relatives is admitted (here the court order). The trial is scheduled to take place on January 10, 2019. ON Twitter, John said he doesn’t care about the trial:
This was my 203rd lawsuit. I never answer them. I always default to whatever their lawyers claim. My first wrongful death was due to an airplane that crashed, piloted by my student pilot. I was found liable. I own nothing, and no one has ever collected.https://t.co/oI2wLxxL3X
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 16, 2018
We will see if John MCAFEE will also be held liable by authorities and investors for his “Bump and Dump” scheme around cryptocurrencies and ICO’s in the next months. It would be fair, we would argue. John MCAFEE perfectly symbolized the moral attitude of the scam artis of the ICO hype.
