By Shelly Melancon (Switzerland)
On Friday, March 5, U.S. prosecutors brought several felony offences against antivirus software guru and the pioneer of McAfee securities, Mr. John McAfee. He was indicted with seven different allegations for being involved in the “scalping” of cryptocurrencies especially Verge and Doge to the tune of $13 million.
Apart from McAfee, one of his other executives was also charged with the same crime. Both of them were brought before a Manhattan Attorney in New York’s south district on Friday. Audrey Strauss, the Manhattan attorney, published a statement, saying, “John McAfee and Jimmy Watson lied and deceived interested people in the rising crypto world to part with millions through a popular social media platform to achieve their goal. Both of them were accused of sending bogus and shoddy statements through private messages to the almost 900,000 followers of McAfee to lure them into ‘investing’ in various cryptocurrencies. Whereas the money was to fulfil their selfish agenda.”
Providing False Information to Make Illicit Gains
The prosecutor’s statement read thus, John McAfee and his partner took advantage of McAfee’s large following on the bird app to hype the prices of crypto coins, notably altcoins. The complaint remarked that McAfee and Watson suggested commodity tokens to potential stakeholders without proof of their investment stakes in such commodities. They only mentioned their intent to take a bearish position in these coins. The federal prosecutors also accused McAfee and his team of making over $1.8 million through the cryptocurrency scam in less than two months – December 2017 to January 2018. The attached notes from the prosecutors remarked that none of the recommended coins increased in value with time.
Also read:“Coin of the day” and “Coin of the week” were some of the promotional tweets authorities found in McAfee’s Twitter account. Some of the recommendations included popular altcoins such as Reddcoin, Verge and Dogecoin.
A statement from William Sweeney, Jr., the assistant director at FBI, read: “as accused, Watson and McAfee committed a pump-and-dump strategy through social media to earn almost two million dollars.” “an illicit activity remains so, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s performed using new or old methods,” Sweeney concluded. Owners of stocks (or cryptocurrency as it applies here) use these schemes to over-hype the securities’ value to enable them to sell the cheap stocks at high prices.
Mcafee Isn’t a First-Timer With Law Authorities
This allegation won’t be McAfee’s first-time clash with the law. He was once accused of evading tax for four years by the U.S. Tax authorities. Even though the 75-year-old received “significant earnings” from multiple sources (including selling the rights to his biography, and consultancy services), he didn’t file his taxes for four years. He has been in Spain detention waiting for his time to face trials in the U.S. for his tax evasion charges.
McAfee has claimed to be a cryptocurrency guru ever since he made his fortune from his McAfee antivirus software since the 1980s. His Twitter account has almost 900,000 followers, and his bio reads: “lover of women, adventure and mystery.”
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