NEW YORK – Antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been indicted for money laundering fraud and conspiracy, alleging that he and his colleagues have earned more than $ 13 million by misleading zealous investors about the emerging cryptocurrency market, officials said on Friday market.
McAfee, 75, was charged in a new unsealed indictment in Manhattan federal court, 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 Thursday night in Texas and would make a first appearance on Friday before a federal judge in Dallas. McAfee, officials said, is being held in Spain on different criminal charges filed by the United States Department of Justice’s tax division.
Lawyer Arnold Spencer, representing Watson, said his client is a former Navy seal with a degree.
“He has fought for the rights and freedoms of others and has the right and looks forward to his day in court to exercise some of those rights,” he said by email.
“Criminal charges are blunt instruments, not precise scalpels,” added Spencer. “This is not the right place to debate whether cutting-edge technologies, like cryptocurrencies, are bonds, commodities or anything else.”
It was not clear who could represent McAfee. There was still no lawyer listed for him in Memphis, Tennessee, the federal court where tax charges were brought against him in October.
“McAfee and Watson exploited a widely used social media platform and enthusiasm among investors in the emerging cryptocurrency market to make millions through lies and deception,” said US Attorney Audrey Strauss in a statement describing crimes in 2017 and 2018.
“Defendants allegedly used McAfee’s Twitter account to post messages to hundreds of thousands of their Twitter followers, spreading various cryptocurrencies through false and misleading statements to hide their true motives for personal interest,” she added.
In October, McAfee was charged in Tennessee with evading taxes after failing to report the revenue from promoting cryptocurrencies while doing consulting work, giving lectures and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.
McAfee developed old Internet security software and has been sought out by authorities in the United States and Belize in the past.
The Tennessee prosecution said that McAfee did not file a tax return from 2014 to 2018, despite receiving “considerable income” from various sources.
In July 2019, McAfee was released from prison in the Dominican Republic after he and five others were suspected of traveling on a yacht carrying high-caliber weapons, ammunition and military equipment, officials on the Caribbean island said at the time.