Why was John McAfee on the run and what happened to him? All your questions about Netflix’s new documentary, Running With The Devil.

Running With The Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee is the latest fascinating true crime offering from Netflix. The documentary tells the mindboggling story of John McAfee, the founder of the $14 billion McAfee antivirus software company who went on the run after being accused of murdering his next-door neighbor. 

When Gregory Faull died of a single gunshot wound to the head in his Belize beachside home in 2012, his eccentric neighbor John McAfee became the chief suspect in the crime. But despite maintaining his innocence, John went on the run from the police, convinced he was being hunted by multiple enemies including members of drug cartels and even the government. 

Here we answer all your questions about John McAfee.

Who is John McAfee?

John McAfee was the founder of the McAfee antivirus software company, but after making millions in the 1980s the playboy inventor spent a lot of his cash on drugs and women.

In 2008 John moved to Belize, a Caribbean country on the northeastern coast of Central America, where many people move to spend their retirement. However, it is claimed by journalist Jose Sanchez in the Netflix documentary that the government doesn’t keep a close eye on those moving to the country making it the “perfect place for those wanting to escape something in North America”.

Why was John McAfee on the run?

When John moved to Belize in 2008 he moved in next door to a man called Gregory Faull, but the pair soon ended up in a dispute. So when Gregory was found shot dead in 2012, John unsurprisingly became the prime suspect. But rather than cooperate with the police and go in for questioning, he went on the run to Guatemala.

Soon a bizarre game of cat and mouse began, with John taking on various strange disguises and pretend disabilities to avoid people recognizing him. He also took a film crew along, as well as security guards and the various women in his life like his former girlfriend Sam Herrera and later his wife Janice Dyson. John spent most of his time on the run living on a boat as he traveled the world, as well as paying people off to avoid being caught.

What happened to John McAfee?

Eventually, John returned to the US and it seemed the game of chase was over when the authorities seemingly lost interest in him, leaving him to even run for the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016.

But by 2019 John was on the run again, this time from the US government for tax evasion and insider trading. He was facing 30 years in jail and in October 2020, he was arrested in Barcelona. However, in a turn of events that no one saw coming, John was found dead in his prison cell on June 23, 2021, in an apparent suicide, just hours after Spanish courts ruled he was to be sent back to the US to face his charges.

Despite the fact his death was ruled as suicide, as the documentary comes to a close it is revealed that John had always maintained he would never take his own life. In the years leading up to his death, he has maintained that if he ever died and it looked like suicide then he would have been murdered. 

John’s wife Janice also released a statement after his death, saying she’d spoken to him hours prior to him being found dead, and that he’d told her he loved her and that they’d made arrangements to speak that same evening.

REAL Messenger is an app designed to help agents promote their listings and themselves.

Social media is table stakes now. But not all apps are created equal. Facebook is for friends. Instagram is for interests and LinkedIn is for work connections. So why shouldn’t real estate has its own social media platform that brings together a global community of agents, buyers, and sellers?

We’ve learned that there’s power in a platform to find what you’re looking for, to share, and to chat — opening doors and elevating your presence. We’ve watched how people become influencers with followers who devour every post. These influencers don’t have to pay to promote themselves, they’ve built their audience through content, personality, and what they stand for.

In contrast, real estate has become “pay-to-play,” restricting agents from showcasing their listings on well-known real estate platforms, unless they pay (a lot!) to promote them. Agents have lost control in the real estate process, while big proptech profits from agents’ hard-earned listings.

Social media meets real estate

Imagine a social media outlet just for real estate — one like Instagram or WhatsApp geared 100% to our industry. The audience is engaged in real estate. Agents connect to share information about listings with one another or potential buyers and sellers – and retain those connections. Agents can even share their knowledge of properties before they are listed publicly.

It’s now all possible with the REAL Messenger app, an incredibly fast social media platform for real estate agents to promote their listings and share their styles and specialties, as well as their sales history and approach. Integrated into the app is an easy chat feature that replaces the need for cold calls, excessive emails, and online ads that don’t yield much return on investment.

Giving agents back control

From the agents’ perspective, sites and apps like Zillow are taking listing information from MLS agreements, repackaging it to promote it on their sites, then selling the information back to the agents who owned it in the first place! Agents end up paying these sites expensive advertising fees. And while many agents use Instagram to let their followers know about their listings, they are not really targeting a real estate-specific audience. WhatsApp is also used for secure, data-encrypted conversations ensuring quick exchanges of information. But how can an agent build their business when they’re promoting to people who are not in the market? Our formidable team of developers created the best of all worlds for the world of real estate — it’s like Instagram with a secure chat feature similar to that of WhatsApp.

The REAL advantage

Self-branding and inbound marketing is built into REAL. Agents brand themselves by creating content that showcases their listings, providing information buyers will need, and sharing their successes with transactions. Agents use the app’s three-point rating system to describe their listing and other important characteristics.

Potential buyers can search for anything specific to their interests (i.e., a home with a patio, a garden, or a swimming pool) in particular zip codes. They can also browse by scrolling through the listings to find the hottest, most popular real estate properties in their areas. These potential buyers can follow agents whose posts resonate with their preferences and interests, expanding agents’ networks.

Deepfakes are fake videos created using digital software, machine learning, and face swapping. Deepfakes are computer-created artificial videos in which images are combined to create new footage that depicts events, statements, or actions that never actually happened. The results can be quite convincing. Deep fakes differ from other forms of false information by being very difficult to identify as false.

How do deepfakes work?

The basic concept behind the technology is facial recognition, users of Snapchat will be familiar with the face swap or filter functions which apply transformations or augment their facial features. Deep Fakes are similar but much more realistic. Fake videos can be created using a machine learning technique called a “generative adversarial network” or GAN. For example, a GAN can look at thousands of photos of Beyonce and produce a new image that approximates those photos without being an exact copy of any one of the photos. GAN can be used to generate new audio from existing audio, or new text from the existing text – it is a multi-use technology. The technology used to create Deep Fakes is programmed to map faces according to “landmark” points. These are features like the corners of your eyes and mouth, your nostrils, and the contour of your jawline.

When seeing is no longer believing

While the technology used to create deep fakes is a relatively new technology, it is advancing quickly and it is becoming more and more difficult to check if a video is real or not.  Developments in these kinds of technologies have obvious social, moral, and political implications. There are already issues around news sources and the credibility of stories online, deep fakes have the potential to exacerbate the problem of false information online or disrupt and undermine the credibility of and trust in news, and information in general.

The real potential danger of false information and deep fake technology is creating mistrust or apathy in people about what we see or hear online. If everything could be fake does that mean that nothing is real anymore? For as long as we have had photographs and video and audio footage they have helped us learn about our past and shaped how we see and know things. Some people already question the facts around events that unquestionably happened, like the Holocaust, the moon landing, and 9/11, despite video proof. If deepfakes make people believe they can’t trust video, the problems of false information and conspiracy theories could get worse.

False news can lead to false memories

One of the most common concerns and potential dangers of deep fakes and false information, in general, is the impact it can have on democratic processes and elections.

A recent survey from UCC confirmed that people recall fake news more than real news. The results of the survey indicated that voters may form false memories after seeing fabricated news stories, especially if those stories align with their political beliefs, according to a new study. The researchers suggest the findings indicate how voters may be influenced in upcoming political contests, like the 2020 US presidential race.

The author of the report Dr. Gillian Murphy added; “This demonstrates the ease with which we can plant these entirely fabricated memories, despite this voter suspicion and even despite an explicit warning that they may have been shown fake news,”.