NEW YORK – Antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering in which he and cohorts earned more than $ 13 million by misleading investors about the emerging cryptocurrency market, authorities said Friday.
McAfee, 75, is charged in a recent indictment in federal court in Manhattan, along with Jimmy Gale Watson Jr., who served as executive adviser on what prosecutors described as McAfee’s so-called cryptocurrency team.
Prosecutors said Watson, 40, was arrested in Texas on Thursday night and would initially appear before a federal magistrate in Dallas on Friday. McAfee, according to authorities, is being held in Spain on separate criminal charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s tax department.
Attorney Arnold Spencer, who represents Watson, said his client is a decorated former Navy Seal.
“He has fought for the rights and freedoms of others, and he is entitled to and looking forward to his day in court to exercise some of those rights,” he said in an email.
“Criminal charges are blunt instruments, not exact scalps,” Spencer added. “This is not the place to debate whether cutting-edge technologies such as cryptocurrencies are securities, commodities or anything else.”
It was not immediately clear who McAfee could represent. There has not yet been a lawyer in the federal court of Memphis, Tennessee, where tax costs have been filed against him.
“McAfee and Watson have leveraged a social media platform and enthusiasm among investors in the emerging cryptocurrency market to earn millions through lies and deception,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement describing crimes in 2017 and 2018 word.
“The defendants allegedly used McAfee’s Twitter account to post messages to hundreds of thousands of his Twitter followers interpreting various cryptocurrencies with false and misleading statements to hide their true, self-interest motives,” she added.
In October, McAfee was charged in Tennessee with tax evasion after failing to report revenue from the promotion of cryptocurrencies while doing consulting work, taking turns speaking and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.
McAfee developed early internet security software and has been searched by US and Belize authorities in the past.
According to the Tennessee indictment, McAfee did not file tax returns from 2014 to 2018, despite receiving significant income from several resorts.
In July 2019, McAfee was released from custody in the Dominican Republic after he and five others were suspected of traveling in a high-caliber yacht with weapons, ammunition and military equipment, Caribbean officials said at the time.