The infamous John McAfee, now in custody in a Spanish prison, is awaiting his extradition to the United States. McAfee faces several different criminal charges based on a new statement from the US Department of Justice.
The Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that the millionaire was charged with «conspiracy to commit fraudulent goods and securities» and a string of other crimes. The latter include money laundering, electronic communications and conspiracy to defraud investors.
Recall that a couple of years ago, McAfee was very active in the cryptocurrency crowd. He constantly talked about the high growth potential of Bitcoin and even predicted its rise in price to a million dollars. To draw attention to the cryptocurrency, he even promised to eat his penis «on television» if the value of BTC does not reach the amount he named. True, in the end he retracted his statements and blamed everyone who believed in them.
At the same time, in between his loud statements, McAfee promoted and advertised various crypto startups, many of which turned out to be outright fraudulent schemes. Naturally, he took a lot of money for this.
As it became known in April 2018, one advertising tweet from John cost customers $ 105 thousand. And although the amount was large, there was no end to those wishing to advertise their own project: the entrepreneur received offers from at least 200 startups. And it was this advertising of blockchain projects that became the reason for the lawsuit against McAfee.
What is John McAfee accused of
Last week, McAfee assistant Jimmy Watson Jr. was also targeted by Texas law enforcement after being arrested and detained. Watson faced similar charges for his role in the McAfee Team, which promoted cryptocurrency startups.
Prior to today’s news, McAfee had already faced allegations from US governing bodies of tax evasion and initial coin offerings or ICOs, which he allegedly advertised with the aim of obtaining compensation without properly informing the public. After fled from the US government in 2019, McAfee was arrested in Spain in October 2020.
In addition, John fell under the gun of the authorities and other countries. For example, in July 2019, an entrepreneur was detained on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic while docking his yacht in Puerto Plata. The reason for the imprisonment for four days was the large-caliber weapon that was on the yacht.
It’s not the first time John McAfee goes to jail.
Here is a quote from Audrey Strauss, Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The replica is provided by Cointelegraph.
McAfee and Watson allegedly used social media and investor enthusiasm in the emerging cryptocurrency market to make millions through lies and deception. The defendants allegedly used McAfee’s Twitter account to post messages to hundreds of thousands of his followers, promoting various cryptocurrencies with false and misleading statements in order to hide their true selfish motives. McAfee, Watson and others on his team raised more than $ 13 million from investors.
That is, the main complaint is that the investors in the projects mentioned by John McAfee most often lost money. At the same time, the developer himself made money, because he replenished his own cryptocurrency reserves in advance, after which he enjoyed growth.
In addition, representatives of the law enforcement agencies mentioned McAfee’s tweets, with the help of which he carried out pumps – that is, sharp increases in the rates of individual coins – in order to immediately sell the previously accumulated cryptocurrencies. One of these altcoins was Electroneum, whose value almost doubled in a matter of hours in December 2017. With this in mind, it looks like John will have to go through lengthy litigation in the near future.
Financial regulators in the United States are very negative about such schemes, even if they do not relate to the world of traditional finance.
We believe that there are more than enough reasons for a trial in the activities of John McAfee. And although his forecast for Bitcoin for a million dollars, taking into account the current activity of the first cryptocurrency, turned out to be relatively painless, small projects brought significant losses to investors. This means that the prosecutor’s office will have to study the activities of the entrepreneur and how he earned.
