The McAfee Antivirus founder tweeted “I have nothing. Yet, I regret nothing,” adding: “The US believes I have hidden crypto. I wish I did but it has dissolved through the many hands of Team McAfee (your belief is not required), and my remaining assets are all seized. My friends evaporated through fear of association.”
McAfee could soon be extradited to the United States, with a ruling set to come from Spanish courts in the coming days. If extradited, the 76-year-old will face court on charges of evading taxes between 2014 and 2018, that carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.
The businessman and his accomplices allegedly reaped more than $13 million from pump-and-dump cryptocurrency schemes, according to the US Department of Justice. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed related civil charges concerning the alleged schemes.
McAfee has also been accused of concealing more than $23 million he allegedly made from boosting seven cryptocurrency offerings on Twitter. US authorities say McAfee held himself up as an expert on cybersecurity and cryptocurrency through his tweets, speeches and his role as a CEO of a publicly traded cryptocurrency company. They also accused him of telling followers he had no stake in the coins and at the same time touting how crypto “will change the world.”
McAfee has long considered himself an outlaw, and spent much of the last several years living on a yacht in the Caribbean, admittedly on the run from US tax authorities. He turned up in Spain last September and was arrested there the following month.
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