Belize authorities deny the fact that the founder of the antivirus firm has been caught

Dec 3, 2012 12:45 GMT  ·  By

On December 1, John McAfee’s spokesperson revealed that they received an “unconfirmed report” that the founder of the world-renowned antivirus company had been arrested at the border between Mexico and Belize.

Although they haven’t been able to confirm it, today, Brian Fitzgerald – an official spokesperson for John McAfee – has come forward with another statement regarding the alleged arrest.

“Late on Friday, November 30, 2012 after a series of short media interviews we lost contact with Mr. John McAfee. Soon after losing contact with Mr. McAfee we received a voicemail from an anonymous caller ID. In the message the gentleman stated, ‘John was picked up crossing the Mexican border,’” Fitzgerald explained.

He states that the individual who tipped them off didn’t leave any contact information and he failed to provide any evidence to support his claims.

“[…] we cannot confirm 100 percent that the message we received is accurate or deny it. The only thing we can confirm is that we have not been able to make contact with Mr. McAfee and that he has not communicated with Mr Chad Essley,” he added.

On the other hand, Belize officials deny that McAfee has been taken into custody. Furthermore, according to Silicon Beat, law enforcement representatives insist that they only want to question him.

In the meantime, cartoonist and filmmaker Chad Essley – who is responsible for administrating McAfee’s blog – has revealed that the website has come under distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks numerous times over the past period.

A couple of weeks ago, McAfee went into hiding after being accused of murdering his 52-year-old neighbor. At the time, he feared that the police would kill him if he turned himself in.

He initiated his own investigation and even offered a $25,000 (19,000 EUR) reward for information on the real killer’s identity.