U.S. says John McAfee indicted over fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes | Hacker News Reader

U.S. says John McAfee indicted over fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes

reuters.com

113 pointspseudolus73 comments

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I'm glad someone is finally holding John McAfee accountable. A bet is a bet. Thank you DOJ! Will it be livestreamed?

https://jacobedawson.github.io/dickening/

The hot dog emoji is what really makes this special

There's more than one of these!

http://dickening.com/

Someone might be running a pump-and-dump scheme in McAfee's dick jokes.

If you had asked me several years ago when McAfee returned to our general awareness I would not have guessed that this would be what he was going to next be indicted for...

This would've been in my top 5, and it would've been the least wacky of those five.

Either way, I would not have been money against John McAfee being indicted for at least something.

> and it would've been the least wacky of those five.

Okay, I'll bite: what are the other four?

Not OP but Ill share my bingo board.

Murder

Statutory Rape/sex tourism

Numerous drug violations

Tax evasion

I forget which country (I think Belize?), but McAfee has previously claimed to have donated malware-infected laptops to a government that was trying to prosecute him so he was able to watch as they were investigating him, and in the process discovered some sort of political corruption crime ring.

He's not a very reliable source, but pretty interesting if true.

It's interesting but I don't believe anything the guy says. I do believe the scores of underage central american women that claim he made them sit in a poop swing, however. He denies it, but it's just too weird of a thing for multiple unrelated sources to come up with.

McAfee may have one time been a genius, I really don't know much about him other than his namesake. I do know everything I remember him claiming in the past decade or so seems to have turned out to be something like vaporware or outright fraud.

"McAfee is being detained in Spain on separate criminal charges filed by the Justice Department’s tax division, the department said." How many times has McAfee left USA and returned because he has been charged of a crime?

From the Axios article [1], "He also fled his home in Belize in 2012 and became a fugitive in a murder case."

https://www.axios.com/john-mcafee-indicted-cryptocurrency-ce...

Yes. I know someone that knew the victim on the island. McAfee is really who is suspected by the local community, because they had frequent disagreements about property boundaries, if memory serves.

Funny aside, McAfee also donated a bunch of malware infected laptops to the Belizean Govt and police force:

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/07/john-mcafee-infe...

> Funny aside, McAfee also donated a bunch of malware infected laptops to the Belizean Govt and police force

It's even worse than you make it sound. He planted remote access software on the laptops so he could spy on the police. This isn't just a couple of copies of Bonzi Buddy we're talking about here.

This is amazing chutzpah, and I hope that it ends up a minor plot point in the next Neal Stephenson novel.

>McAfee is really who is suspected by the local community, because they had frequent disagreements about property boundaries

I have recently watched a documentary on him, and it goes even beyond that. One of the people in his entourage was a known local gang member (just like majority of people in McAfee's entourage), and he was seen leaving the residence of the murdered person on the night of the murder occurring at the time after the murder has already happened iirc. They had interviews with that person too, and he pretty much said as much as one can say to admit they did it without actually admitting it.

Yeah I’m not sure about that one. I’m sure he wasn’t squeaky clean, but it looks like they framed him on that one.

Him, Hans Reiser, Ugueth Urbina are somehow all the same person in my memory. I get their details mixed up a lot.

I guess they should go ahead and indict Musk and the rest of crypto Twitter too then.

There is still time to indict Musk. It could happen.

Seems it doesn’t matter how long it has been since a sale occurred.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN28J2UL

This one in particular would hurt the very investors SEC is supposed to be protecting:

https://www.coindesk.com/xrp-untradeable-sec-security?amp=1

So we should let scams continue because it hurts current investors? Sounds very disingenuous.

What scam are you talking about, exactly?

Ripple

> I guess they should go ahead and indict Musk and the rest of crypto Twitter too then.

Maybe they will, but it'll probably be a few years. This indictment is for activity in 2018.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/john-david-mcafee-and-e...

This situation is quite different than that of Tesla and Elon Musk.

1. Mcafee was an individual that pumped the price and sold his position for realized gains.

2. Tesla is a publicly traded company, which made all of the regulatory and legal filings necessary for the purchase of their crypto.

3. Tesla has no forseeable plans to exit their position.

4. This article isn't telling the entire story. Mcafee was also indicted for Tax evasion, which Elon Musk nor Tesla are committing.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/john-mcafee-indicted-tax-evas...

So when they DO make forseeable plans and execute those plans to sell, then it will have happened “after” they pumped BTC. How long should a company hold before a pump and dump become fine?

What pump and dump are you talking about?

Pump = buy a lot of something so the price goes up. Let's say $2 billion of it

Dump = sell at the higher prices and match the increased demand

This is whats being advocated by market analysts, and it would be considered "fine": https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/21/03...

If companies don't collude but do it in a sequence, then when does it become ok?

As a different example, in 2014 employees alleged that Silicon Valley companies colluded to depress their wages, by acting like a cartel:

https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon...

But cartels can form without having to collude, merely by people acting in concert on a meme or belief (like HODL or SQUEEZE THE SQUOZE) and this seems fine!

https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3798

A pump and dump scheme requires that the "pump" be achieved by making fraudulent representations about the assets being "pumped" to artificially increase their value, followed by said assets being offloaded at the artificially increased value.

McAfee did that all of that. Tesla/Musk did not (no false statements of fact or offloading at artificially inflated values).

Additionally, a "cartel" has a legal definition which requires deliberate coordination of activity (aka "collusion"). Independent activity in which everyone does the same thing without coordination is not a cartel, because the coordination aspect of it is key to the illegality of the act.

So a group of people pumping a cryptocurrency by buying it, and then letting the skyrocketing charts in exchanges and news about it bring new people into the mix, and then selling, is totally fine? Even if this group of people coordinates their activities?

As you wrote it, yes it is completely fine.

Please back that up with links to a legal argument or SOMETHING. I realize it’s hard to prove a negative but can you at least back it up with authoritative links of some sort?

In the U.S., activities are legal unless there is a law stating that they are illegal.

We don't need to provide an authoritative link that the above is legal; you need to provide some sort of authority that it is not.

"According to the indictment, McAfee allegedly evaded his tax liability by directing his income to be paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees."

John Mcafee was breaking US law and got caught.

You wait until your previous comments don't have an outsized effect on the market price anymore.

What about tweets like "Dogecoin is the people’s crypto"?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1357241340313141249

Did Musk dump a bunch of Doge on people? I think that's the big difference.

Do you know he did not?

Are you accusing him based on no evidence or what is your point her? Of course he doesn't have prove that something didn't happen.

I don’t think anyone does, but in America one is innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around.

It is a bit of understated wit of a backhanded compliment given its value is so low everybody can afford it. A massive surge in value is going to over five cents per coin. Of course ironically that makes it a better actual currency instead of a speculation vehicle in spite of being easily mineable by design.

> 4. This article isn't telling the entire story. Mcafee was also indicted for Tax evasion, which Elon Musk nor Tesla are committing.

They probably are, but neither Tesla or Musk are in the Governments / Deep State crooshair, quite the opposite actually, they the modern times poster Stakhanovites.

I know you’re being downvoted for the deep state comment, but for the most part you are correct: Federal Prosecutors routinely target high profile individuals and those that receive negative press.

Musk is incredibly high profile and regularly receives negative press.

I know Musk isn't exactly conventionally sane and tends to be erratic but tax evasion while trying to surplant big oil and muscling in on the auto industry, and grabbing space launche business from Russia would be a downright /stupid/ move.

You cannot reach the level Musk has reach without using all the tools to reach these levels, including tax evasions... with the complicit agreement of many "people in power". It just happens their interest coincide today, tomorrow's another day, interest shifts.

Musk pumped Dogecoin as a joke to prime media radar for Tesla's bitcoin purchase disclosure.

It was in effect a bitcoin pump with dogecoin as a media lure, which given Musk's ability to command attention was nearly as effective e (for TSLA) as pumping bitcoin directly, but without breaking any SEC rules.

Right, but a "pump and dump" scheme requires two things which Tesla/Musk did not do: make knowingly false statements of fact about Dogecoin or Bitcoin, and a "dump" of the assets at inflated values (as it appears that Tesla/Musk still retain their previously announced Bitcoin holdings).

"Without breaking any SEC rules" seems like a perfectly good reason not to indict.

Do you have to complete the "dump" side to be guilty? Does Musk still own all his bitcoin/dogecoins he's purchased? I believe Tesla still owns their $1.5b worth of bitcoins.

Yes you do.

> McAfee and Watson allegedly engaged in a scheme to exploit the “broad reach” of McAfee’s Twitter account by buying cryptocurrency assets, concealing a plan to liquidate them and then selling most quickly after his endorsements boosted prices, the CFTC said in a court document filed on Friday.

Hopefully this enforcement action will put a damper on some of the many apparent investment schemes around cryptocurrencies. At least ones within reach of US regulators.

It's not clear that yelling 'buy crypto, crypto is great' while buying crypto is illegal.

It's not even clear that yelling 'buy crypto, crypto is great' while selling crypto is. Bitcoin isn't really a security, and the rules for commodities and currencies are different from those for securities.

Yes they should, everything involving “cryptocurrency” is a scam in one way or another.

Dead serious. There is no reason for any of it to exist other than to engage in one form of serious crime or another.

Does the US have jurisdiction here or is the Southern District just playing Team America World Police again? Is using Twitter the new precedent for being ensnared by the American legal system?

>Is using Twitter the new precedent for being ensnared by the American legal system?

No, but intentionally not paying tons of taxes you are required to pay is something that will definitely put your head on the table. If IRS managed to get Al Capone back then, getting McAfee for it should be fairly trivial.

> Does the US have jurisdiction here

He was detained on tax evasion charges. So yes, the U.S. has pretty uncontroversial jurisdiction over taxes owed to it.

Assuming he's still a US citizen then US laws apply regardless of where he is. Just because he's outside the US doesn't mean he can break US laws.

If you use services located in the US to defraud Americans, the US can come after you. There is nothing wrong with this. If I were a victim of such a fraud, I would certainly want the US to go after the perpetrator.

I want John McAfee to be my spirit animal

His twitter profile has JoJo references. Wonder if he genuinely enjoys the show or is meming his way into manipulation (i think the latter is the case with alot of these guys who act like "fellow kids")

JoJo isn't "fellow kids"

JoJo has been a hit manga series since the 80's

Actual Justice Department announcement also posted, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359775

McAfee indicted. Not indicked....yet.

He's been jailed in Spain for many months already. When are they going to bring him back to the U.S?

If using your 'reputation' to hype up projects for personal profit is illegal, then they ought to lock up every tech executive on the planet. That said, I wouldn't complain if they did...

Executive salaries and bonuses are almost 100% based on name recognition... Which is mostly hype backed by nothing. Exactly the same as in this case. There is absolutely no difference.

Random retail investors aren't being scammed in that situation. It's completely different.

Wait till the price of Bitcoin, crypto and other so-called 'speculative assets' start hyperinflating and we'll see who is really being scammed.

This shows that social online networks are really advertising/propaganda networks which can be used to manipulate unaware people. Misuse by these and other sociopath's needs some type of governmental control.

Privatization of Propaganda by Governments ?

So are tongues for that matter. Just look at the damage they have caused historically from lynchings after false rape allegations to wars.

Saying they need to be controlled applies equally to tongues logically - it being inborn changes nothing about the negative uses.

meaning: they couldn't bust him on anything else, so they slapped him bs charges... might have gone for good old "security fraud" or "wire fraud".

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