On April 30, 2012, McAfee's property in
Orange Walk Town,
Belize, was raided by the
Gang Suppression Unit of the
Belize Police Department. At that time, McAfee was in bed with his girlfriend. A GSU press release stated that McAfee was arrested for unlicensed drug manufacturing and possession of an unlicensed weapon.
[19][75][76][77] He was released without charge.
[78] In 2012, Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez confirmed that McAfee was neither convicted nor charged, only suspected.
[79]
In January 2014, McAfee claimed that when the Belizean government raided his property it seized his assets, and that his house later burned down under suspicious circumstances.
[80]
On November 12, 2012, Belize police started a search for McAfee as a "person of interest" in connection to the murder of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull. Faull was found dead of a gunshot wound on November 11, 2012, at his home on the island of
Ambergris Caye, the largest island in Belize.
[81][82] Faull was a neighbor of McAfee's.
[83] In a November 2012 interview with
Wired,
[84] McAfee said that he has always been afraid police would kill him and thus refused their routine questions; he has since evaded the Belizean authorities.
[83] Belize's prime minister
Dean Barrow called McAfee "extremely
paranoid, even bonkers."
[85] McAfee fled Belize when he was sought for questioning concerning the murder.
[86][87][88]
The magazine
Vice accidentally gave away McAfee's location at a Guatemalan resort in early December 2012, when a photo taken by one of its journalists accompanying McAfee was posted with the
EXIF geolocation metadata still attached.
[89] While in
Guatemala, McAfee asked Chad Essley, an American cartoonist and animator, to set up a blog so that McAfee could write about his experience while on the run.
[90] McAfee then appeared publicly in
Guatemala City, where he attempted to seek
political asylum.
On December 5, 2012, McAfee was arrested for illegally entering Guatemala. Shortly afterward, he was placed under arrest and a board to review McAfee's plea for asylum was formed. The committee denied his asylum, so he was taken from his holding facility to a detention center in order to await deportation to Belize.
[91]
On December 6, 2012,
Reuters and
ABC News reported that McAfee had two minor heart attacks in a Guatemalan detention center and was hospitalized.
[92][93] McAfee's lawyer stated that his client had not suffered heart attacks, but had instead suffered from
high blood pressure and
anxiety attacks.
[94][95][96]
McAfee later said he had faked the heart attacks while being held in Guatemala, to buy time for his attorney to file a series of appeals that ultimately prevented his deportation to Belize, thus hastening the government's decision to send him back to the United States.
[97] On December 12, 2012, McAfee was released from detention in Guatemala and deported to the United States.
[98]
On August 2, 2015, McAfee was arrested in
Henderson County, Tennessee, on charges of one count of driving under the influence and one count of possession of a firearm while intoxicated.
[99]
On November 14, 2018, the Circuit Court in
Orlando, Florida refused to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit against McAfee for Faull's death.
[100][101]
In January 2019, McAfee announced that he was on the run from U.S. authorities and living internationally on a boat following the convening of a
Grand Jury to indict him, his wife, and four of his
2020 Presidential campaign workers on tax-related charges.
[102] The IRS has not independently confirmed the existence of these charges.
[102]
In July 2019, McAfee and members of his entourage were arrested while his yacht was docked at
Puerto Plata,
Dominican Republic, on suspicion of carrying high-caliber weapons and ammunition. They were held for four days before being released.
[103]
On August 11, 2020, McAfee fabricated a hoax
[104] that he was arrested in Norway during the
COVID-19 pandemic after refusing to replace a lace thong with a more effective face mask. McAfee would later post a picture of himself to Twitter with a black eye, claiming that it occurred during this arrest.
[105] However, the photo of the alleged arrest shows an officer with the German word for "police" on their uniform, so it could not have been an arrest in Norway. The
Augsburg Police later confirmed McAfee unsuccessfully attempted to enter Germany on that day, but wasn't arrested.
[106]
On October 5, 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice for tax evasion. The indictment alleges he earned millions of dollars from 2014–18 but has failed to file income tax returns.
[107]
