John McAfee Detained For Illegitimate Digital Currency Pumping & Tax Evasion

The antivirus software pioneer and two-time presidential candidate of the United States, John McAfee has been detained and charged for tax evasion, as per the recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice. McAfee has also been charged by the SEC for deceitfully pumping digital currencies. This is unfortunate news for someone who in many cases spoke sense about the market, and we’re saddened by these news as McAfee often spoke to our publication about the future of this industry. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the software magnate and his guard Jimmy Watson Jr. with deceptively pumping ICOs. The SEC elucidated that from at least November 2017 to February 2018, “McAfee leveraged his fame to make more than $23.1 million U.S. dollars (‘USD’) in undisclosed compensation by recommending at least seven ‘initial coin offerings’ or ICOs to his Twitter followers.”

As per the agency, he had around 784k Twitter followers at the time. At the time of reporting, that number has considerably increased to about a million.

The Department of Justice elucidated that McAfee was unsuccessful in filing tax returns from 2014 to 2018 in spite of fetching “millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.”

If found guilty, the software magnate faces an all-out sentence of 5 years in jail on each count of tax evasion and an utmost sentence of 1 year in prison on each count of deliberate letdown to file a tax return.