Behind the Bastards - Part One: John McAfee Is Not Funny Anymore
Aired: 2019-02-12
Duration: 01:16:51


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (02:08) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that.
[00:00:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:31]  I got you.
[00:00:32]  I got you.
[00:00:36]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[00:00:41]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:00:44]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:00:47]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:00:48]  That's so funny.
[00:00:50]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:00:58]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:06]  What's up, everyone?
[00:01:07]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:01:08]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:01:12]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:01:15]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:01:16]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:01:23]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:01:26]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[00:01:33]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:01:35]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:01:36]  There's a lot of life.
[00:01:38]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:45]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:01:52]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:01:56]  I doctored the test once.
[00:01:58]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:02:02]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:02:05]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[00:02:07]  My mind was blown.

=== The Virus Scammer (15:46) ===

[00:02:08]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:02:10]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:02:11]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:02:13]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:02:17]  Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:27]  Hey, what's scrambling my eggs?
[00:02:29]  I'm Robert Evans.
[00:02:31]  This is Behind the Bastards.
[00:02:32]  That's my new introduction.
[00:02:33]  Sophie is crawling under the desk, so overwhelmed with shame that she can no longer sit upright.
[00:02:41]  But there's no taking it out.
[00:02:42]  There's no editing it.
[00:02:44]  I'm sitting here in the studio with my guest, Lacey Mosley.
[00:02:47]  Lacey, how are you doing?
[00:02:48]  I'm doing good.
[00:02:49]  Lacey, you are a comedian, an actress, also deeply embarrassed, and a scam goddess.
[00:02:55]  No, I love them what's scrambling my eggs.
[00:02:57]  Thank you.
[00:02:58]  Peter wouldn't love that, though.
[00:03:00]  No, they would not.
[00:03:00]  No.
[00:03:01]  No, they would not.
[00:03:02]  But we lost that demographic long ago.
[00:03:05]  So, Lacey, you are a scam goddess, as I already stated.
[00:03:09]  You were on our episode about Carl May.
[00:03:12]  Carl May, yes, old Shatterham.
[00:03:14]  Oh, Shatterham.
[00:03:15]  Yes.
[00:03:15]  Hitler's favorite author, scammer.
[00:03:17]  Yes.
[00:03:18]  Today we're talking about another scammer.
[00:03:20]  Ooh.
[00:03:20]  And in fact, we're talking about a scammer who fooled me for a little while.
[00:03:23]  So, yeah, yeah, this is going to get...
[00:03:25]  So he's good.
[00:03:26]  I don't know if I'd say he's good, but like, you know, everybody's got something they're vulnerable to from a scammer.
[00:03:33]  We're going to find out what's your vulnerability.
[00:03:34]  Yeah, I've got a vulnerability to the scam this guy was popping.
[00:03:37]  Oh, great.
[00:03:38]  Open on up then.
[00:03:39]  All right.
[00:03:40]  Have you ever heard of John McAfee?
[00:03:44]  If it's involved with a computer program, virus scatter.
[00:03:47]  The virus scam.
[00:03:48]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:49]  Yeah, this is the guy who invented that.
[00:03:51]  He's quite a character, and that's what we'll be talking about today.
[00:03:55]  John David McAfee was born in the forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England on September 18th, 1945.
[00:04:02]  His father was an American soldier and his mother was a British person.
[00:04:05]  He was raised in Salem, Virginia, although other sources say Roanoke.
[00:04:08]  Like most things about John McAfee, the story is a little different depending on who you hear it from, which is kind of one of the first signs that somebody's a little bit of a scammer.
[00:04:17]  Right.
[00:04:17]  Now, McAfee's mom worked as a bank teller.
[00:04:20]  His dad was a road surveyor and a drunk.
[00:04:22]  McAfee says he was a very unhappy man who beat both John and his mother.
[00:04:26]  He shot himself when John was 15, and McAfee later told Wired in an interview, quote, every day I wake up with him, every relationship I have, he's by my side.
[00:04:34]  Every mistrust, he is the negotiator of that mistrust.
[00:04:37]  So my life is fucked.
[00:04:39]  So starting this on a dark note.
[00:04:41]  But also a very juicy backstory.
[00:04:43]  Like a scammer needs like something to feign vulnerability with.
[00:04:47]  So he probably tells everybody that story.
[00:04:49]  He's like, yeah, I stole $20 out your wallet, but really my dad stole $20.
[00:04:54]  How does that stole $20 out of your wallet?
[00:04:57]  He's been using his dad his whole life.
[00:04:59]  I love it.
[00:04:59]  Wait, did his dad have an accent?
[00:05:00]  Do we know?
[00:05:01]  No, I mean, his dad was an American.
[00:05:02]  Oh, okay.
[00:05:03]  I'm guessing his mom did.
[00:05:04]  Would have been more exciting.
[00:05:04]  He has kind of a weird voice, but I wouldn't say he sounds British.
[00:05:07]  He doesn't sound British?
[00:05:08]  No, no.
[00:05:08]  All right, because that ups your scam level 100 points.
[00:05:10]  Oh, yeah.
[00:05:11]  No, he wouldn't.
[00:05:12]  I trust anything British people say.
[00:05:13]  Absolutely.
[00:05:14]  It's a superpower they have.
[00:05:15]  It's why they ruled the world briefly.
[00:05:17]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:17]  That's why when you become rich, you become British.
[00:05:19]  That's why Madonna's British now.
[00:05:20]  Exactly.
[00:05:21]  I soon, too, will be British.
[00:05:22]  One day I'll come on this podcast and I'll have made enough money to talk like this.
[00:05:25]  But continue.
[00:05:26]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:28]  That's a great Madonna pretending to be British accent, by the way.
[00:05:31]  Because it doesn't sound British or fake British.
[00:05:34]  Right.
[00:05:34]  It sounds Madonna fake British.
[00:05:36]  Exactly.
[00:05:36]  It's specific.
[00:05:37]  You nailed it.
[00:05:37]  Shout out to a number one scammer, Madonna.
[00:05:41]  John enrolled in Roanoke College.
[00:05:42]  He sold magazine scriptions door to door in order to make money for booze, which, like his dad, he drank way too much of.
[00:05:48]  In interviews, McAfee claims he made a fortune in the subscriptions business by telling people who answered the door that they'd won a free subscription.
[00:05:55]  They just had to pay a shipping and handling fee.
[00:05:57]  Yes.
[00:05:58]  That's the oldest late night TV scam ever.
[00:06:02]  That's how I got my ice potty.
[00:06:03]  It was free, but I just paid $29.99 and shipping to Hanling.
[00:06:08]  Ice potty?
[00:06:08]  What?
[00:06:09]  You know, it's not a pot tea like for peeing.
[00:06:11]  Like, you know how you, it's like a bowl.
[00:06:13]  That's probably not the name, but it's a bowl.
[00:06:15]  And then the ice is made on the sides.
[00:06:17]  And then you crack the bowl and you got a bowl of ice.
[00:06:20]  I've never heard of that.
[00:06:21]  You've never seen this info martial?
[00:06:22]  Now, can you sell me one of these fantastic products, Lacey?
[00:06:25]  Listen.
[00:06:27]  Ice without the limitations of plastic containers.
[00:06:33]  Are you entertaining?
[00:06:34]  Ice bucket for your wine.
[00:06:36]  Are you sick?
[00:06:37]  Ice bucket for your head.
[00:06:39]  You see what I'm saying?
[00:06:40]  It works.
[00:06:41]  Ice helmet to wear out the summer.
[00:06:43]  Are you hot?
[00:06:44]  You don't got no AC?
[00:06:46]  Ice helmet.
[00:06:48]  But yeah, that's how they get you.
[00:06:50]  Yo, and that's door-to-door too.
[00:06:52]  So there's no way to confirm or deny.
[00:06:53]  Shout out to him.
[00:06:54]  Always, door-to-door people are normally scammers.
[00:06:57]  That's like the first startup scam for most scammers.
[00:06:59]  And you would think that maybe we'd have ice genie.
[00:07:02]  Ice genie.
[00:07:03]  Yes.
[00:07:03]  Genie sounds sexier than that.
[00:07:04]  Sponsoring this podcast.
[00:07:06]  Ice genie.
[00:07:07]  Y'all get that ice genie.
[00:07:08]  It's free.
[00:07:09]  You just got to send a little money.
[00:07:11]  So John got his bachelor's degree in 1967.
[00:07:14]  He started studying for a PhD in mathematics at Northeast Louisiana State College, but he got expelled for sleeping with and then marrying an undergraduate student he was supposed to be managing.
[00:07:23]  He bounced around several coding jobs, but his career was interrupted when he got busted buying pot.
[00:07:28]  He managed to avoid any sort of conviction, probably because he was a white guy.
[00:07:33]  How do you get busted buying pot?
[00:07:34]  I mean, who is getting busted buying weed?
[00:07:37]  This is 1960, the 60s, so maybe it happened more.
[00:07:40]  I feel like that's even more cause for it not to be how you got busted.
[00:07:44]  We both come from Dallas.
[00:07:45]  I know people who got busted buying weed.
[00:07:47]  Really?
[00:07:47]  Oh, yeah.
[00:07:48]  This feels like the laziest way to go to jail.
[00:07:50]  It's like weed.
[00:07:52]  It has to feel dumb.
[00:07:53]  Wasn't it just going around everywhere?
[00:07:55]  Like free love, free weed?
[00:07:57]  I think in some places, but if he was in like Louisiana, like...
[00:08:00]  Like an undercover cop trying to sell him weed.
[00:08:02]  Hi, sir.
[00:08:02]  Would you like to partake in?
[00:08:03]  Would you like some Mara Joanna?
[00:08:07]  Mary Ann Jane?
[00:08:09]  Do you like puffing on reavers?
[00:08:11]  Meet me in this alley.
[00:08:13]  Yeah, maybe he was just shitty at buying pot.
[00:08:15]  But anyway, he got out of the charges.
[00:08:19]  And in 1969, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company hired him to basically program their IBM-based computers to schedule trains.
[00:08:27]  Now, McAfee didn't know how to do any of this.
[00:08:29]  He wrote out a fake resume and he got the job because there was no internet back then.
[00:08:33]  There's no way to check on shit like that.
[00:08:34]  Right.
[00:08:35]  Yeah.
[00:08:35]  Shout out to him.
[00:08:36]  Shout out to him.
[00:08:37]  Here's Wired.
[00:08:38]  Quote: After six months, McAfee's system began to churn out optimized train routing patterns.
[00:08:42]  One morning, he decided to experiment with another psychedelic called DMT.
[00:08:46]  He did a line, felt nothing, and decided to snort a whole bag of the oranges powder.
[00:08:50]  Within an hour, my mind was shattered, McAfee says.
[00:08:53]  Part of him still believes he's still on that trip, that everything since has been one giant hallucination, and that one day he'll snap out of it and find himself back on his couch in St. Louis listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
[00:09:02]  What?
[00:09:03]  Have you ever had a drug trip like that?
[00:09:05]  No, because I'm just, I'm scared to go that deep.
[00:09:09]  But I will say that I have done acid, and you could definitely go to work on acid.
[00:09:14]  You know, everyone's made acid out to be so crazy.
[00:09:17]  I know someone who micro-doses acid every single day.
[00:09:20]  Yeah.
[00:09:21]  And they're the happiest person I've ever fucking met.
[00:09:23]  And apparently you can do your job on acid.
[00:09:26]  I've done a lot of different jobs on acid.
[00:09:28]  One episode of this podcast was recorded on acid, but I won't tell anyone.
[00:09:31]  Everyone has to guess.
[00:09:32]  Everybody's got to guess which episode.
[00:09:35]  If you guess correct, we will send you.
[00:09:37]  I'm kidding.
[00:09:38]  I can't send you shit.
[00:09:40]  I will send you behind the bastard swag.
[00:09:42]  All you have to send me is $100 for shipping and handling.
[00:09:45]  I'll send you some acid.
[00:09:46]  All you've got to send me is.
[00:09:49]  I didn't even notice you doing a scam there, Lacey.
[00:09:51]  That was good.
[00:09:51]  Look, the finesse.
[00:09:52]  You got to have the finesse ready.
[00:09:54]  You made that so smooth.
[00:09:56]  But yeah, so you can do shit on acid.
[00:09:57]  So are you telling me that this guy scammed his way into this job that he had no like skills?
[00:10:03]  Routing trains.
[00:10:04]  So also, can we just realize how the gravity of train routing?
[00:10:11]  They didn't even ask my mans to like route one train, you know, in a training process.
[00:10:15]  They were like, here, can you show us how you route the train?
[00:10:17]  Like, so trains could have been crashing.
[00:10:19]  People could have just been dying left and right.
[00:10:20]  People just trusted anything printed on paper back then.
[00:10:23]  Like, wow, you got ink and pencil.
[00:10:26]  It's embossed, all right?
[00:10:28]  What's this, Helvetica?
[00:10:30]  Oh, the job is yours.
[00:10:32]  The job is yours, sir.
[00:10:34]  Let's put some lives in this man's hands right away.
[00:10:38]  Oh, God.
[00:10:39]  But then he got good at it.
[00:10:41]  Well, yeah, I mean, maybe it's just not that hard.
[00:10:43]  I've never routed trains.
[00:10:44]  Neither have I.
[00:10:45]  Yeah.
[00:10:46]  But I can see how, like, there's that guy, Doc Ellis, who pitched a no-hitter in baseball on LSD.
[00:10:52]  Like, I can see how the way that acid works, how you could do that sort of job well.
[00:10:57]  For sure.
[00:10:57]  Because you're like, it's about focus and stuff.
[00:11:00]  I remember just staring at some trees for a long time.
[00:11:03]  And I understand what he's saying about like having a trip that goes so far that you're never quite sure that you've come back from it.
[00:11:09]  Because there's a couple of those.
[00:11:10]  I still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, pretty sure I'm back in Denton at like 1.45 in the morning 12 years ago.
[00:11:17]  That is a specific.
[00:11:20]  I did a lot of drugs in Denton back in the day.
[00:11:22]  Right.
[00:11:23]  Is this a good place in Denton?
[00:11:24]  Are you like, oh, I'm back in that Denny?
[00:11:26]  This is a very good place in Denton.
[00:11:29]  This is very true.
[00:11:30]  There's no good place.
[00:11:31]  Sorry, Denton, Texas.
[00:11:33]  You know you're trash.
[00:11:34]  We all know.
[00:11:34]  Some solid DFW area.
[00:11:36]  Right.
[00:11:37]  I'm back at the Waterburger.
[00:11:42]  I can tell it's Denton because there's that smell in the air.
[00:11:44]  Right.
[00:11:45]  I need to do drugs in the Bahamas so I can think I'm back somewhere nice.
[00:11:49]  Yeah, that would have been a wiser choice.
[00:11:51]  So, drugs did as drugs do, and McAfee accelerated into a massive, uncontrollable addiction.
[00:11:57]  He started doing cocaine every morning, drinking a bottle of hard liquor every day.
[00:12:00]  His marriage fell apart.
[00:12:01]  You know, all the things that you'd expect from a serious substance abuse problem.
[00:12:05]  And I don't think he's lying about this.
[00:12:06]  Just based on what comes next, I'm pretty sure this part's true.
[00:12:09]  Okay.
[00:12:09]  In the 1970s, he moved to Silicon Valley, where drugs come from, and of course, his problems got even worse.
[00:12:14]  But still, he was able to maintain a sometimes unstable but generally profitable career as a programmer.
[00:12:19]  By 1983, he was director of engineering at a company called Omex.
[00:12:23]  He was 38 years old, selling cocaine to his employees and railing lines off his desk every morning.
[00:12:28]  In Santa Clara in 1983, this might have made him one of the less wild middle managers in the country.
[00:12:33]  Look, I watched Wolf of Wall Street.
[00:12:35]  And yeah, that shit is problematic, and I'm glad workplaces are safe.
[00:12:37]  But boy, oh boy, would I have loved to just have one day at a job where everybody was just doing cocaine?
[00:12:43]  Quailudes in the bathroom.
[00:12:44]  Fuck yeah.
[00:12:45]  All right, is everyone here for the morning meeting?
[00:12:46]  Gregory.
[00:12:48]  See, okay.
[00:12:49]  And that's part of why I hate those guys is because they had to like fuck with people's money and they had to like, I'm going to guess most of them were rapey, too.
[00:12:57]  Oh, for sure.
[00:12:58]  Like sure.
[00:12:58]  If we could have all just made it be a thing where everybody was just always doing drugs at work, what a better economy that would be.
[00:13:05]  The FBI was just railing lines of, you know, PCP or something, then going out in the morning.
[00:13:10]  Like.
[00:13:11]  Yeah, but so much energy.
[00:13:13]  So much energy?
[00:13:14]  You know what I mean?
[00:13:15]  Not much I could get done every day.
[00:13:17]  The shutdown, they wouldn't have even noticed.
[00:13:20]  Right.
[00:13:20]  It's been 30 days.
[00:13:21]  I haven't slept in 30 days.
[00:13:23]  Oh, I haven't gotten paid?
[00:13:24]  Damn.
[00:13:26]  I got to check on this.
[00:13:28]  I need to buy more.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:29]  Unfortunately, one of the side effects of drugs is poor judgment.
[00:13:32]  So I guess.
[00:13:33]  That is a big part of the John McAfee story, too.
[00:13:36]  Yeah, good to know.
[00:13:37]  So he describes himself at this time as constantly terrified about running out of drugs.
[00:13:42]  He contemplated suicide on a daily basis.
[00:13:45]  And eventually, misery drove him to a therapist who sent him to Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:13:48]  And that seemed to work really well for John McAfee for a little while.
[00:13:52]  He sobered up.
[00:13:54]  He claims forever, but as you'll learn, what John claims should not be taken at face value.
[00:13:58]  At any rate, he told Wired his first AA meeting is what really started his life.
[00:14:02]  Now sober, McAfee soared to unthinkable heights.
[00:14:04]  He got a job designing software for Lockheed Martin.
[00:14:08]  And it was there that he came across his very first computer virus, something called the Pakistani brain.
[00:14:13]  Computer viruses get weird names.
[00:14:14]  Yeah.
[00:14:15]  Here's a wonderful fast company article on John written by a guy named Jeff Wise.
[00:14:19]  Quote: Seeking an opportunity, he picked the virus apart and figured out how to defeat it.
[00:14:23]  Then he built a program called VirusScan that could detect and disarm multiple threats automatically.
[00:14:27]  The program, the first commercial antivirus software, was an impressive achievement, but it's what he did next that was true genius.
[00:14:33]  See, John didn't start selling his antivirus instantly.
[00:14:37]  He started giving it away.
[00:14:38]  He just put it out there for any company to use.
[00:14:40]  And this was at an early enough era that nobody else was doing this.
[00:14:43]  So all these companies that had just now learned viruses were a problem.
[00:14:47]  Some CEO wakes up in the morning, sees a news story, and is like, oh my God, we have 10,000 computers.
[00:14:52]  He learns there's a free program.
[00:14:53]  So all these companies start downloading John's free program.
[00:14:58]  You get in that?
[00:14:59]  He's doing the same thing that drug dealers do.
[00:15:02]  Right.
[00:15:02]  He's also doing the same thing he did with them damn magazine.
[00:15:04]  He's talking about, yeah, you get a free subscription.
[00:15:06]  Yeah, it's free.
[00:15:07]  It's free, buddy.
[00:15:08]  Yeah.
[00:15:08]  In no time, he had like 30 million people using his software.
[00:15:12]  And within a couple of years, half of the Fortune 500 companies used McAfee antivirus software.
[00:15:18]  So he started McAfee Associates out of his small home in Santa Clara.
[00:15:22]  And he eventually started offering licenses to these companies.
[00:15:24]  And because they were big companies, they wanted the security of knowing this isn't just a free product.
[00:15:29]  We're like paying a company to maintain our stuff and make sure.
[00:15:32]  So he kind of went seamlessly from free product to making millions and millions of dollars.
[00:15:37]  He became the world's biggest evangelist of the apocalyptic dangers of computer viruses.
[00:15:42]  He started showing up on television.
[00:15:44]  He invented Y2K?
[00:15:45]  Is that what you're telling me?
[00:15:46]  No, this is prior to that.
[00:15:48]  We're talking like the late 80s.
[00:15:50]  Oh, right, right, right.
[00:15:51]  Yeah.
[00:15:51]  So he would just show up on, but he was one of the first guys showing up on TV and like daily news programs talking about viruses.
[00:15:58]  Yeah, scaring us about this virus is going to do this.
[00:16:00]  It's going to do this.
[00:16:01]  And in 1989, he wrote a book called Computer Viruses, Worms, Data Diddlers, Killer Programs, and Other Threats to Your System.
[00:16:08]  Damn, that's a lot of threats.
[00:16:09]  That's a lot of threats.
[00:16:10]  All this did well enough that by 1990, he was making $5 million a year off of his antivirus business.
[00:16:16]  Oh, wow.
[00:16:16]  Pretty great.
[00:16:17]  Yeah.
[00:16:18]  By 1991, far away from John McAfee in the fabled land of Australia, another antivirus expert named Roger Riordan discovered a unique new virus coded to deliver a debilitating injection of code on March 6th, 1992, code that would wipe out all infected computers.
[00:16:35]  Discovered or create.
[00:16:36]  No, he discovered.
[00:16:37]  I mean, he was a researcher.
[00:16:39]  Oh, all right.
[00:16:40]  I haven't run into anything about this guy being it.
[00:16:42]  Yeah, like he's his job.
[00:16:43]  Okay.
[00:16:44]  He's looking at stuff.
[00:16:45]  Sure.
[00:16:45]  This guy's not the scammer.
[00:16:46]  The scam's coming in us.
[00:16:48]  Maybe he was.
[00:16:49]  I don't know enough about that.
[00:16:50]  I'm also suspect of him, but go ahead.
[00:16:53]  Is it because he's the Australian lazy?
[00:16:55]  Listen, you never know what's going on down under.
[00:16:57]  Exactly, because it's down under, so you can't see it.
[00:17:00]  That's what makes him so shady.
[00:17:02]  Anyway, yeah.
[00:17:04]  So Riordan named this virus he'd found Michelangelo, not because it was a work of art, but because March 6th was Michelangelo's birthday.
[00:17:11]  Now, the Michelangelo virus was not actually a big deal.
[00:17:13]  It had a bunch of flaws that made it not super dangerous.
[00:17:16]  It hadn't been coded well.
[00:17:17]  So left to its own devices, it would have made almost no impact.
[00:17:20]  But John McAfee read about this virus, and he knew that there was potential in just its name, because Michelangelo, that's like a Hollywood virus.
[00:17:28]  Oh, yeah, that's a very sexy virus.
[00:17:30]  Yeah.
[00:17:31]  You can imagine someone explaining that virus to like Bruce Willis and then him having to go punch people to stop it.
[00:17:36]  Right.
[00:17:37]  Yeah.
[00:17:37]  That's exactly what it is.
[00:17:38]  It's just Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson neck chopping people.
[00:17:41]  Yeah, neck chopping people.
[00:17:42]  What is Michelangelo?
[00:17:43]  Where's the Michelangelo?
[00:17:45]  For a whole movie.
[00:17:46]  Yeah.
[00:17:47]  Yeah, you get a solid 90 minutes out of that.
[00:17:49]  Right.
[00:17:49]  Five or six sequels.
[00:17:50]  Liam Neeson never shoots anyone.
[00:17:51]  Okay.
[00:17:52]  He beats everyone's ass individually.

=== Hollywood Virus Potential (05:41) ===

[00:17:54]  No, he's guns aren't allowed in his hands because, you know, I had half of like a Chuck Norris style joke there and I just lost it, Lazy.
[00:18:02]  Damn, that's a solid Chuck Norris style joke, though.
[00:18:04]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:05]  You get the pieces.
[00:18:06]  Yeah, you said someone added up.
[00:18:08]  Put it together.
[00:18:08]  Tweet it to us.
[00:18:09]  Yeah.
[00:18:11]  So John McAfee started claiming, based on nothing really, that the Michelangelo virus was going to disable 5 million PCs when it started.
[00:18:18]  And that was a lot of fun.
[00:18:19]  In the 90s, right.
[00:18:20]  That was like all the computers.
[00:18:22]  Right.
[00:18:22]  Isn't this like the era where the computers look like on ghosts where like it was like green?
[00:18:27]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:28]  Everything's green and there's like giant monitors way more than our televisions do now.
[00:18:32]  You could have told us any fucking thing about viruses back then.
[00:18:35]  You could have told me Patrick Swayze and the ghost were really going to come back and hack your shit.
[00:18:39]  I'm going to go to the bathroom.
[00:18:39]  Nobody gets a hand in.
[00:18:41]  They can strangle you from your monitor.
[00:18:44]  Whoopi Goldberg said, you in danger, girl.
[00:18:47]  Go buy McAfee.
[00:18:48]  This was right around the time that Whoopi Goldberg started in that movie next to a fake Tyrannosaurus where they were both cops.
[00:18:55]  Great moment in pop culture history.
[00:18:56]  A lot of people forget that movie, but they shouldn't.
[00:18:59]  It was called Teddy Rex, and it was amazing.
[00:19:01]  Are you kidding me?
[00:19:02]  No, it's a real movie.
[00:19:02]  I've never heard of this movie.
[00:19:03]  It's a real movie.
[00:19:04]  It was somewhere sometime in the 90s.
[00:19:06]  Anyway, yeah, as you just said, this was in the early 90s.
[00:19:10]  Nobody knew anything about computers or viruses and stuff.
[00:19:12]  So everyone just kind of like took McAfee's word for this.
[00:19:15]  Sure, he was on TV on it.
[00:19:16]  He was on TV.
[00:19:17]  He was like the nation's number one antivirus expert.
[00:19:21]  That's what people had called him just because nobody else was talking about it.
[00:19:25]  Because he was the only one.
[00:19:26]  Because he was the only one.
[00:19:28]  Imagine getting to just be the expert by default because nobody else.
[00:19:31]  Oh, yeah.
[00:19:31]  It's amazing.
[00:19:32]  That's the best way to make a shitload of money.
[00:19:34]  Right.
[00:19:34]  Yeah.
[00:19:35]  And yeah, he nailed it.
[00:19:37]  Right place at the right time.
[00:19:38]  I'm going to read a quote from a 2012 article from the website Naked Security.
[00:19:43]  Thousands of PCs could crash by Friday, screamed USA Today.
[00:19:46]  Deadly virus set to wreak havoc tomorrow was a headline in the Washington Post.
[00:19:50]  Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times declared, paint it scary.
[00:19:53]  So this is how everybody's covering this thing.
[00:19:56]  Like John McAfee talks up the Michelangelo virus, and then everybody's freaking out about how it's going to disable all these computers and crash the economy.
[00:20:04]  CNN sent a film crew to McAfee's offices because they wanted to like...
[00:20:08]  What were they going to film?
[00:20:09]  The virus?
[00:20:09]  They were hoping that they'd be getting thousands of calls and everybody running around typing.
[00:20:14]  Yeah.
[00:20:15]  I hope that McAfee hired crisis actors.
[00:20:18]  He actually kind of did.
[00:20:20]  Oh, shit.
[00:20:21]  Not quite that, but he released a special antivirus program built solely around Michelangelo.
[00:20:26]  But since it was actually really easy to scan for this virus, he made the program scan a bunch of unnecessary files so it took like 10 times longer than it needed to.
[00:20:34]  Because he wanted them to feel like it was doing.
[00:20:36]  Oh, maybe I got it.
[00:20:37]  Yeah, maybe I got it.
[00:20:38]  It's taking so long.
[00:20:41]  So McAfee had initially claimed, as I said, the virus would hit as many as 5 million machines.
[00:20:47]  The estimate went down to 1 million by like March 2nd, 1992.
[00:20:52]  And then a couple of days later, it was McAfee said it was anywhere between 50,000 and 5 million computers.
[00:20:57]  So he starts revising down the estimates as well.
[00:21:00]  As people buy his products.
[00:21:02]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:21:03]  Yeah, it was a grift.
[00:21:06]  And, you know, when Michelangelo actually activated, there was only very few computers, like, I think a few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand, but like not a significant number got hit.
[00:21:15]  It didn't really do any damage.
[00:21:17]  But that didn't actually matter because John McAfee had succeeded in drumming up enough fear about viruses that every major company had to have antivirus software on its computers.
[00:21:26]  And they all wound up using McAfee because he was the guy talking about this shit.
[00:21:30]  In October of 1992, his company went public and raised $42 million in its first round.
[00:21:36]  Wow.
[00:21:37]  By 1994, McAfee's personality and showmanship had made the adults in the room decide to edge him out of his own company.
[00:21:42]  He left, cashed out his stock, and wound up with around $100 million.
[00:21:46]  Personality and showmanship.
[00:21:48]  So he was coked up and drunk, acting a fool?
[00:21:51]  Yeah.
[00:21:51]  Yeah.
[00:21:51]  There were apparently sex contests in the office and stuff like that.
[00:21:54]  Sex contests.
[00:21:55]  People fucking on desks.
[00:21:57]  Fucking all fucking on desks.
[00:21:59]  I hope you can imagine me as Soldier Boy right now, like sex contests.
[00:22:03]  What?
[00:22:04]  That's how you know you really wall in that work.
[00:22:06]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:07]  If there's a sex contest at your antivirus company.
[00:22:10]  It's your antivirus company.
[00:22:12]  The irony of that, like a lot of people got chlamydia at the antivirus company.
[00:22:21]  Not the antivirus company.
[00:22:23]  I thought you were going to antivirus company.
[00:22:25]  Yeah, but it was some sex contest.
[00:22:28]  Who won?
[00:22:29]  I'm kidding.
[00:22:29]  I don't want to know.
[00:22:30]  The virus.
[00:22:32]  It was clearly one of those things where the company was, suddenly when it was worth a huge amount of money and like a lot of companies relied on it, the adults that got brought in were like, this guy's a fucking nut.
[00:22:43]  We can't have him running this business.
[00:22:45]  When other people have money involved, it's like, okay, come on back, little Elon.
[00:22:49]  Oh, you're crazy.
[00:22:52]  You're a huge liar.
[00:22:53]  You're a gigantic problem.
[00:22:55]  Okay.
[00:22:55]  You're not even doing miles.
[00:22:57]  You're going to commit felonies.
[00:22:59]  We can't have you around here.
[00:23:01]  Like, you're doing kinds of crimes where other people got to go to jail with you.
[00:23:04]  You know, you're doing Trump-level crimes where it's like a whole consortium of people who got to go to jail at the same time.
[00:23:09]  Yeah.
[00:23:10]  So McAfee's out.
[00:23:11]  He was 47 years old with, you know, what were effectively unlimited resources.
[00:23:16]  And so he immediately spent $25 million buying a 280-acre compound in Colorado in a 10,000 square foot mansion.
[00:23:23]  So McAfee's out of his company.
[00:23:25]  He's rich and he is beginning the next stage of his life.
[00:23:27]  And we're going to get into what comes next.
[00:23:29]  Oh, God.
[00:23:30]  But first, Lacey, are you a fan of products?
[00:23:34]  Oh, you know, I love products.

=== Unlimited Resources (03:34) ===

[00:23:36]  You like a service or two every now and then?
[00:23:38]  Absolutely.
[00:23:38]  I'm a big fan of both.
[00:23:40]  And we've got a great list of products and or services for the ears.
[00:23:44]  The people.
[00:23:46]  Listen!
[00:23:52]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:23:56]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:24:00]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:24:02]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:24:06]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:24:10]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:24:13]  Oh my god, this is the same man.
[00:24:16]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:24:20]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:24:22]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:24:24]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:24:26]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:24:29]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:24:31]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:24:33]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:24:38]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:24:39]  Trust me, babe.
[00:24:40]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:50]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:24:56]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:25:00]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:25:06]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:25:15]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:25:21]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:25:24]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:25:27]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:25:29]  That's so funny.
[00:25:30]  Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:25:38]  Say you love me.
[00:25:41]  You know I.
[00:25:43]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:25:50]  What's up, everyone?
[00:25:51]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:25:52]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
[00:26:03]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:26:06]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:26:11]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:26:14]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come.
[00:26:17]  Look for up and coming talent.
[00:26:18]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:26:23]  Yeah.
[00:26:23]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:26:26]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:26:28]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:26:36]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:26:39]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:26:46]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:26:48]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:26:49]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:26:50]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:59]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:27:05]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

=== Desert Paternity Scandal (14:44) ===

[00:27:11]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:27:14]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:27:18]  I doctored the test once.
[00:27:19]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:27:22]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:27:26]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:27:29]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:27:31]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:27:33]  Greg Oesby and Michael Marcini.
[00:27:35]  My mind was blown.
[00:27:37]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:27:39]  This is Love Trap.
[00:27:41]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:27:43]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:27:47]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:27:54]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:27:58]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:08]  And we're back.
[00:28:09]  We just got into some products and services, and now we are talking again about John McAfee, who at this part in our story has bought himself a gigantic mansion and is now getting really into yoga.
[00:28:21]  So that's the thing he does first after he gets out of this company he built is he buys a mansion in Colorado and a couple hundred acres of land and he starts a yoga retreat.
[00:28:30]  Okay, how does cocaine and yoga work together?
[00:28:32]  He's not doing Coke.
[00:28:32]  He says he's sober at this point.
[00:28:34]  Okay.
[00:28:34]  And that may be true.
[00:28:35]  At this point in the story, he may actually still be sober.
[00:28:38]  I'm inclined to believe it.
[00:28:39]  Yeah.
[00:28:40]  Because yoga doesn't seem like relaxing.
[00:28:43]  Cocaine yoga.
[00:28:44]  Cocaine yoga.
[00:28:45]  All right, guys.
[00:28:45]  Not a mistake.
[00:28:46]  Not a mistake, motherfuckers.
[00:28:48]  All right, guys, we're getting into child spots.
[00:28:49]  Child spots.
[00:28:50]  Yeah, I feel like that's too intense.
[00:28:52]  Okay, cool.
[00:28:52]  I'll believe you, McAfee.
[00:28:54]  Yeah, he got really into yoga.
[00:28:56]  Starts doing yoga retreats, and he also launches an app called Powwow, which was a very early chat client.
[00:29:01]  When I read an article about it in the register, it was described as Native American-themed.
[00:29:06]  I don't know what the hell.
[00:29:06]  What the hell does that mean?
[00:29:08]  Like the Redskins?
[00:29:09]  That's not a good idea.
[00:29:11]  I don't know.
[00:29:11]  I'm not sure if it was offensively done or not, but probably.
[00:29:14]  It had to have been.
[00:29:15]  It was the 90s.
[00:29:16]  So yeah, almost.
[00:29:17]  Something about Native American themes sounds like it's not offensive.
[00:29:20]  Something really bad.
[00:29:22]  You know, it was African-American themed.
[00:29:25]  Y'all get it, right?
[00:29:27]  Chicken, watermelon.
[00:29:29]  I'm black, guys.
[00:29:30]  Did I say that?
[00:29:30]  I'm black.
[00:29:31]  I can say that.
[00:29:32]  But yeah, that doesn't sound good.
[00:29:33]  That sounds bad.
[00:29:34]  No, especially since John McAfee is a guy with very prominent tribal tattoos on both of his arms.
[00:29:39]  Is he Native American?
[00:29:40]  No.
[00:29:41]  He is as white a man as it gets.
[00:29:43]  His last name's McAfee.
[00:29:46]  You don't know about that tribe?
[00:29:48]  They the ones that killed all the water buffalo.
[00:29:50]  See, now I'm going to hell.
[00:29:52]  Yeah, no, this doesn't sound good.
[00:29:53]  So he has an app.
[00:29:54]  He has an app.
[00:29:55]  Some people say that it was ahead of its time.
[00:29:56]  It was like a chat client like AIM.
[00:29:58]  You know, those of you who are old enough to have used AOL Instant Messenger or like Skype Chat or whatever, but before anyone else was doing a chat client, it didn't clearly win out and dominate the market, but he was able to sell the venture for like $17 million before AIM and Skype, you know, came into it.
[00:30:13]  So he made more money.
[00:30:15]  He did good, but he decided this was all of the business he wanted to be into for the rest of his life.
[00:30:20]  After selling Powwow, he vowed to devote himself to, quote, the opposite of the business world.
[00:30:26]  What are you both laughing at?
[00:30:28]  Sophie just showed me a picture of John McAfee.
[00:30:31]  Oh, good.
[00:30:31]  He looks like if Richard Branson did more drugs than Richard Branson does.
[00:30:38]  Yeah.
[00:30:39]  Like if Richard Branson was in a motorcycle gang and then for some reason was stranded on an island and lost a bunch of weight.
[00:30:46]  Yeah.
[00:30:46]  So 90% of pictures of John McAfee, he's shirtless.
[00:30:50]  And in 50% of those pictures, he's armed.
[00:30:52]  He has a tie on in this list.
[00:30:54]  He's shirtless with a tie on his tie.
[00:30:56]  The fuck?
[00:30:57]  Where are we going?
[00:30:58]  And he'll often be shirtless with a gun, like strapped around his chest.
[00:31:02]  Oh, my God.
[00:31:03]  John McAfee.
[00:31:05]  All right.
[00:31:05]  We're getting to he's not that man yet.
[00:31:07]  Right now, he's the recent millionaire.
[00:31:10]  He's doing yoga.
[00:31:11]  He's a Native American.
[00:31:12]  He's just decided he's tired of business.
[00:31:14]  He wants to be into the opposite of the business world for the rest of his life.
[00:31:18]  So he starts teaching yoga and he wrote like four books on yoga, which I haven't been able to read yet.
[00:31:23]  I read some reviews of them and they seem like they were pretty normal for the most part.
[00:31:28]  If you're like into that kind of stuff.
[00:31:30]  Four books from a white dude.
[00:31:33]  On yoga.
[00:31:33]  Yoga.
[00:31:34]  Oh, a ton of white dudes have written yoga books.
[00:31:36]  That's true.
[00:31:36]  And I don't buy them.
[00:31:37]  Yeah.
[00:31:38]  No, I mean, I'm not saying I'd buy them, but like, none of the reviews are like, he's talking about fucking aliens or anything like that.
[00:31:43]  Right, the people who buy it, like, they want that.
[00:31:46]  Yeah.
[00:31:46]  Apparently, one of them does talk about time travel, telepathy, and levitation.
[00:31:51]  Okay.
[00:31:51]  So it is possible that John McAfee believes or believed at one point that he could read minds.
[00:31:55]  If I had that much money, I would think I could.
[00:31:57]  Why not?
[00:31:58]  Sure.
[00:31:58]  I can see that leading you into some wild places, which that's what this story's about.
[00:32:04]  So that kind of... thing spiraled until the compound had turned into like a really active yoga retreat and John McAfee decided that that was too much work.
[00:32:12]  So he kind of peaced the fuck out.
[00:32:14]  So in August 2002 on a flight to Kathmandu, John McAfee read an article about a device called a trike.
[00:32:21]  Now trikes are basically motorcycles attached to small planes.
[00:32:24]  They can travel at around 100 miles an hour and zip along at just 20 or 30 feet above the ground.
[00:32:29]  McAfee was enchanted by this idea.
[00:32:31]  He started going out to New Mexico, learning how to fly by jaunting from airport to airport.
[00:32:35]  And this is like his new rich man hobby that he fucking falls in love with.
[00:32:38]  So like fuck yoga, fuck Colorado.
[00:32:41]  I'm going to fly around in these weird little motorcycle planes.
[00:32:45]  A spike plane.
[00:32:46]  Yeah.
[00:32:46]  So in 2003, he bought a tricked out jeep and he and his girlfriend, who was like in her mid-20s at this point.
[00:32:52]  Of course.
[00:32:53]  Yeah.
[00:32:53]  And he's like 50s now?
[00:32:54]  He's like late 40s.
[00:32:56]  Okay.
[00:32:56]  Yeah.
[00:32:56]  All right.
[00:32:57]  Yeah, I mean, it's not like criminal, but it's like kind of what you'd expect from a 47-year-old guy with $100 million.
[00:33:02]  Yeah, you're going to have like a bad one.
[00:33:04]  You're going to start dating a 24-year-old.
[00:33:05]  Yeah.
[00:33:06]  Sure.
[00:33:06]  Whatever.
[00:33:06]  You're doing what a million other guys who got rich have done.
[00:33:10]  Yeah.
[00:33:10]  So he and his girlfriend start like driving around in a Jeep looking for beautiful landmarks in the desert to build rudimentary airports on.
[00:33:16]  They decided like the real problem with these trikes is that you had to have airstrips to land in.
[00:33:20]  So like you couldn't really go anywhere that pretty because they didn't have like crazy range.
[00:33:24]  So you just have to fly from one town's airport to the next.
[00:33:26]  Nobody wants to do that.
[00:33:28]  So they started like finding all these beautiful things.
[00:33:30]  Right.
[00:33:30]  Nobody wants to fly the bike, the black plane there.
[00:33:33]  No, he wanted to like fly around canyons in the middle of the high desert and stuff.
[00:33:37]  So he like made all these airstrips in the middle of the desert.
[00:33:40]  He bought hundreds of acres of land and made a bunch of like a network of airstrips.
[00:33:44]  And like the idea was to turn aero trekking, which he is like the name he coined for the sport, into like a badass extreme sport where people would have adventures in like the wild desert flying from these isolated little airstrip to airstrip.
[00:33:57]  And like this network he built made that possible.
[00:33:59]  So when he talked to the Wall Street Journal, McAfee explained, my personality is such that I can't do something halfway, which is, you know, he follows through.
[00:34:07]  He follows through.
[00:34:09]  In 2004, John McAfee founded the Sky Gypsies, who basically served.
[00:34:14]  Why is he always using some problematic terminology?
[00:34:16]  First, he had the Native American app.
[00:34:18]  Now he got the Sky Gypsy.
[00:34:20]  Like, what else is he going to come out with?
[00:34:23]  Okay, at least we have like the N-word boat.
[00:34:25]  Like, what is happening?
[00:34:26]  Yeah, I mean, you don't have to include groups of people into these sales.
[00:34:31]  No, don't point at me like that.
[00:34:33]  This story, Lacey, ends with both a boat and racism.
[00:34:36]  Stop!
[00:34:37]  But not quite that way.
[00:34:39]  I have not read this, guys.
[00:34:41]  I have no idea what's happening.
[00:34:42]  I'm so upset that I'm guessing.
[00:34:44]  I guess because my scammer brain, I understand.
[00:34:46]  Yeah.
[00:34:46]  But I will say, shout out to the gold digger.
[00:34:48]  Well, I'm not going to go call her a gold digger.
[00:34:50]  Maybe she wasn't a gold digger, but I don't get super hot for like old dudes.
[00:34:54]  But if they got money, ooh, you sexy now.
[00:34:57]  But she's out here riding around in the desert with this fool.
[00:34:59]  Normally you just go to nice dinners and they take you on vacation.
[00:35:02]  Like, she must have really loved him.
[00:35:04]  I think she's, yeah, and it seems like she was having a, like, they seem to have had like a good time for a while.
[00:35:08]  It seems like it was one of those things where she was like, yeah, I'll go have adventures in the desert for four years.
[00:35:13]  Like, that sounds great.
[00:35:14]  I feel like I would come up dead.
[00:35:15]  That sounds like some Scott Peterson type thing.
[00:35:17]  You don't come back from those.
[00:35:18]  No, thanks.
[00:35:19]  And a couple of people do come up dead in the John McAfee story.
[00:35:23]  Okay, I'm going to stop talking about that.
[00:35:24]  But not her.
[00:35:25]  Not her.
[00:35:26]  Okay.
[00:35:26]  Yeah, the Sky Gypsies were all arrow trekers, too.
[00:35:30]  They were a mix of other rich people McAfee liked and random strangers he plucked out of obscurity and gave a role in his weird flying club.
[00:35:37]  He bought an enormous house with several hangars in rural New Mexico and filled it with vintage automobiles he and his friends could off-road in.
[00:35:43]  The Sky Gypsies grew to 200 members, each paying between $500,000 and $270,000 a year for the right to hang out with John and fly baby planes.
[00:35:52]  So like some of them were like random people would read about him and like travel to his compound and especially if they were a young woman, he'd be like, sure, we'll just train you how to fly and it's free.
[00:36:00]  And then some of them were like his millionaire friends where, you know, they'd pay a shitload of money.
[00:36:05]  Damn.
[00:36:06]  So this was like the fire festival, but with like bike planes.
[00:36:10]  Well, but they actually did it for years.
[00:36:11]  Yeah.
[00:36:12]  Right.
[00:36:12]  Yeah.
[00:36:12]  Like it wasn't like it was a real thing.
[00:36:14]  Like they built this network of run and runways and they flew around for years.
[00:36:18]  So like it's not a total scam.
[00:36:19]  No, it's not a scam.
[00:36:21]  Yeah, it's not a scam.
[00:36:22]  Yeah.
[00:36:22]  And it's like it's one of those things.
[00:36:24]  He was charging them because there's upkeep on the runways, which I'm sure there is.
[00:36:27]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:36:28]  Absolutely.
[00:36:29]  So here's how the Wall Street Journal described John McAfee's life at this time.
[00:36:33]  Quote, from May through October, when winds and temperatures are most favorable, as many as 150 pilots in their aircraft descend on Rodeo, which is where his compound was, and other airports and stay for weeks at a time.
[00:36:43]  At night, Mr. McAfee and his compadres, some of whom are retired engineers, physicians, and fellow multi-millionaires, often gather before the large television set on his villa's patio to watch a selection of the 6,000 DVDs in his personal library.
[00:36:55]  One night, a group of gypsies, including Mr. McAfee, decided they wanted tattoos.
[00:36:59]  They drove 160 miles to a CD parlor and festooned themselves with tattoos of the ornate Celtic wing the Sky Gypsies adopted as their logo.
[00:37:07]  The group's quirky website describes Mr. McAfee and his 27-year-old girlfriend as John and Jen, two derelicts who didn't lose their last names but have never divulged them.
[00:37:16]  We don't have a clue about them, it adds.
[00:37:19]  So that's how all this is being built at the time.
[00:37:21]  It's fun.
[00:37:21]  It's carefree.
[00:37:22]  This don't sound like sobriety.
[00:37:25]  It sounds like what a guy who loves being wasted and then knows he can't do that anymore because he'll kill himself but has unlimited money does instead of drugs.
[00:37:35]  I'm just gonna spend all day flying in planes as fast as I can 20 years.
[00:37:39]  Trying to get a thrill.
[00:37:40]  Yeah, to get that thrill.
[00:37:42]  John and Jen.
[00:37:43]  Keep a bunch of people around me so I'm never alone.
[00:37:46]  Yeah.
[00:37:47]  Okay.
[00:37:48]  You know, if you're the kind of person who has a huge drug problem, you're always that kind of person.
[00:37:54]  You just got to find something to throw yourself into that's not going to be a problem.
[00:37:56]  You've got to find like a new drug.
[00:37:57]  Yeah, and that's, and this is, I mean, this is healthier than cocaine.
[00:38:00]  Yeah, that's true.
[00:38:00]  So far, it's whatever, you know?
[00:38:02]  He's not a monster yet.
[00:38:03]  He's just.
[00:38:04]  No, you know what?
[00:38:05]  This is just weird, but it's like rich people weird.
[00:38:07]  So far, this is the story of a scammer who cashed out and then did something cool.
[00:38:11]  Yeah.
[00:38:12]  Other than the cultural appropriation.
[00:38:13]  But like, I don't have a problem with flying around in the desert.
[00:38:17]  So y'all just went and got some symbols.
[00:38:18]  Y'all don't know what the fuck these mean.
[00:38:20]  McAfee is his last.
[00:38:21]  I think that part's probably not.
[00:38:23]  Okay, maybe.
[00:38:23]  He's probably Scotts-Irish, I'm going to guess.
[00:38:25]  I don't think he knows anything about Celtic.
[00:38:27]  I mean, his mom came from England.
[00:38:28]  Perhaps.
[00:38:28]  All right.
[00:38:29]  McClushy Ride.
[00:38:30]  McAfee.
[00:38:31]  That one sounds okay.
[00:38:31]  Yeah, you can have a Celtic wing if you get a Mac in your name.
[00:38:34]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:38:36]  As cool and extreme as John's life was, that batitude, I like using the word batitude.
[00:38:41]  Batitude.
[00:38:41]  I haven't gotten to use that since the 90s, was not without cost.
[00:38:44]  To steal an incredible sentence from digital trends writer Andrew Coots, quote, the Sky Gypsies would later prove to be one of McAfee's various downfalls.
[00:38:53]  Whoa.
[00:38:54]  Hell of a sentence.
[00:38:55]  Sky Gypsies just sounds like it couldn't fail.
[00:38:58]  Yeah, it just sounds like it.
[00:38:59]  How could this go wrong?
[00:39:02]  Near the end of 2006, McAfee's 21-year-old nephew, Joe Biddo, the head of the Sky Gypsies Flight School, went up on a training flight with an aspiring gypsy named Robert Gibson.
[00:39:10]  Nepotism.
[00:39:11]  Mr. Gibson.
[00:39:12]  Oh, yeah.
[00:39:13]  Dangerous nepotism.
[00:39:14]  Mr. Gibson was 61 years old, roughly the same age as John McAfee, and newly retired.
[00:39:19]  Like John, he decided that aero trekking was a great way to spend his golden years.
[00:39:23]  There was only one problem, and it was that Joel, ostensibly the head trainer, only had a sport pilot certificate, not an actual pilot's license.
[00:39:31]  Now, Fast Company interviewed an FAA spokesperson about this who said, quote, someone with a sport pilot certificate cannot be paid for providing instruction.
[00:39:40]  So legally, this is a little bit of a gray area.
[00:39:42]  You're not specifically banned from teaching people how to fly if you've got a sport pilot certificate, but you can't be paid to.
[00:39:48]  It can't be your job.
[00:39:50]  Which means that we can't trust, because we can't trust that you know what you're doing.
[00:39:53]  So you can't, like, if you want to teach a friend how to fly, we can't stop you.
[00:39:56]  But like, you can't be the head of a flight school.
[00:39:59]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:40:00]  Like, I can do my friends here at home, but I can't open a salon and everybody's here.
[00:40:05]  Or your, your uncle can't hire you to run his desert flight school.
[00:40:11]  Way higher stakes and like you're teaching people how to fly and you don't know how to fly yourself.
[00:40:17]  Right.
[00:40:17]  Yeah.
[00:40:18]  So he's also a scammer, runs in the family.
[00:40:20]  Shout out to the fam.
[00:40:21]  Yeah.
[00:40:21]  So these two guys, Joe Bitto and Robert Gibson, go out flying and they wind up flying through a box canyon, which is apparently the most dangerous thing to fly through because there's very little and he crashes and they both die horribly.
[00:40:33]  Oh, shit.
[00:40:34]  Yeah.
[00:40:35]  So the Fast Company article goes into more detail about McAfee's reaction to the death of both his nephew and an innocent grandpa.
[00:40:41]  Quote, after the accident, McAfee says he struggled to understand how it could have happened.
[00:40:45]  He speculates.
[00:40:47]  How could putting an untrained man in charge of a pilot school?
[00:40:51]  Okay.
[00:40:51]  Okay, cool.
[00:40:52]  So he didn't know how to fly planes.
[00:40:53]  Yeah.
[00:40:54]  But still.
[00:40:55]  Basically, McAfee posited that the old guy had been sick and had a heart attack during the flight and had like fallen under the kite's wing.
[00:41:03]  So he made up a whole...
[00:41:05]  He just, he's just lies.
[00:41:06]  No, dude, your untrained nephew got them both killed.
[00:41:10]  Yeah, and isn't that the plot to that one book?
[00:41:13]  What's that book called?
[00:41:14]  I don't know.
[00:41:14]  You know where the pilot has a heart attack and then the kid is out with an axe?
[00:41:19]  The hatchet.
[00:41:20]  Hatchet.
[00:41:20]  That's the plot of the hatchet.
[00:41:22]  That is kind of the plot of hatchet, except for the kid is the guy flying and dies.
[00:41:26]  Right.
[00:41:29]  He was like, how can I spend this?
[00:41:31]  Yeah.
[00:41:31]  He had a heart attack.
[00:41:33]  Anyway, quote, to honor Bitto's memory, McAfee had the image of a single teardrop added below his Sky Gypsy's tattoo.
[00:41:39]  What?
[00:41:40]  Yeah.
[00:41:41]  So he murdered his nephew?
[00:41:42]  Is that what he's trying to say too?
[00:41:44]  Because he did write that two murders.
[00:41:45]  He did murder his nephew.
[00:41:46]  He did murder his nephew.
[00:41:48]  This is accurate.
[00:41:48]  This is accurate.
[00:41:49]  I'll say that that's a fair, that part's not appropriation.
[00:41:51]  No, you did kill two guys.
[00:41:53]  Type.
[00:41:54]  Carry on.

=== Spinning Optimism (04:52) ===

[00:41:55]  In an interview later, McAfee said, quote, arrow tricking can create an avenue for self-awareness.
[00:42:00]  He told me seven months after Bitto and Gilson died.
[00:42:03]  You find self-awareness by breaking boundaries, breaking taboos.
[00:42:06]  Do you think you'll ever get bored of this too? I asked.
[00:42:08]  I anticipate that happening.
[00:42:10]  He said, it doesn't worry me at all.
[00:42:12]  Seven months after he gets two people killed.
[00:42:14]  He's already spun it into something optimistic.
[00:42:16]  Yeah, it's just whatever.
[00:42:17]  Yeah, you know, people die.
[00:42:19]  Sometimes they're your nephew.
[00:42:20]  Yeah, sometimes they're your nephew.
[00:42:21]  Sometimes they're your nephew for your unregistered flight school.
[00:42:24]  That's just the way it goes.
[00:42:27]  In 2009, the housing market crashed and the rest of the economy followed soon after, or 2008, actually.
[00:42:32]  The rest of the economy followed soon after.
[00:42:34]  For a brief time, hack journalists did a brisk business writing articles about former industry Titans who'd also lost a lot of money in the crash.
[00:42:40]  Perhaps the most prominent of these was John McAfee.
[00:42:43]  Here's an excerpt from an ABC News article at the time titled, Antivirus Software Pioneer Gets a Dose of Reality.
[00:42:49]  Quote, like many wealthy Americans, McAfee was hit hard with the simultaneous collapse of real estate stocks in Wall Street investment banks, but he got whacked more than most since much of his fortune was tied up in luxury properties.
[00:43:01]  Oddly enough, when real estate markets crash, it's the higher-end properties that crash most, simply because they're not necessities, he said.
[00:43:07]  My father always said, real estate, you can't lose in real estate.
[00:43:10]  You know, oddly enough, you can.
[00:43:13]  So, yeah, he put his property in New Mexico up for auction, sold his property in Colorado.
[00:43:18]  Various sources I found say he was claiming his wealth had been reduced to less than $10 million.
[00:43:23]  Sometimes less than $5 million.
[00:43:25]  Wow.
[00:43:25]  Yeah, McAfee sold everything.
[00:43:27]  And later in 2009, he moved to Belize.
[00:43:30]  So was he not making any money off of flying these air bikes?
[00:43:34]  Okay, could he?
[00:43:34]  That was all a scam.
[00:43:35]  Rumors started floating in the air show circuit that he had moved to Belize and been in all of these articles about how he'd lost his fortune in order to hide the fact that he still had most of his money and move his assets, you know, out of the country into Belize.
[00:43:50]  So he gets on the news and he was like, yeah, you know, I lost all my money.
[00:43:54]  I lost all my money.
[00:43:54]  Yada, yada, yada.
[00:43:55]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:43:56]  But really, he's just shoving stuff over to Belize because he knows that the family of this guy who died at his flight specialist is going to sue his ass.
[00:44:03]  Yes!
[00:44:05]  Shout out to him.
[00:44:06]  He was like, this disparaging article.
[00:44:08]  I'll take it.
[00:44:08]  He was like, yeah, we're cold.
[00:44:10]  This is going to work out great.
[00:44:12]  Yeah, in the years since the crash, John McAfee has repeatedly and openly claimed that these stories about the collapse of his fortune were all lies told to protect himself from the many frivolous lawsuits against him.
[00:44:22]  In 2017, he told ABC News in an interview, quote, I've had 200 lawsuits in my life because my name is John McAfee.
[00:44:29]  No, I didn't lose everything.
[00:44:30]  I wanted to stop people from trying to sue me.
[00:44:33]  So, John didn't move to Belize alone.
[00:44:35]  He brought along a small entourage, including some of his sky gypsies and his long-term girlfriend, Jennifer Irwin.
[00:44:40]  Wired talked to her around this time.
[00:44:42]  Quote, John has always been searching for something, says Jennifer Irwin.
[00:44:46]  She remembers him telling her once that he was trying to reach the expansive horizon.
[00:44:51]  But that expansive horizon seemed to be rushing away from John.
[00:44:54]  He was in his early 60s now.
[00:44:56]  His negligence had ruined his weird airplane club, and he was hiding his assets from a multitude of lawsuits.
[00:45:01]  To make all of that even worse, he was getting old.
[00:45:04]  John seems to be one of those people who has always just been sort of naturally robust.
[00:45:07]  He has a high tolerance for substances.
[00:45:09]  He probably recovers quickly when he, you know, has a drug binge.
[00:45:13]  He seems to have a fast metabolism.
[00:45:15]  That all aided him during his 20 years of being a rich adventure junkie.
[00:45:18]  But vitality only lasts so long without chemical assistance.
[00:45:22]  So, John McAfee started injecting his butt with testosterone twice a month.
[00:45:26]  He moved into a beachside mansion in Belize at an expat-heavy community called Ambergris K. There, he launched a cigar company, a coffee company, and a water taxi company.
[00:45:35]  He claimed he was basically handing the business to locals for free, but it's just as likely that this was part of some scheme to hide his money.
[00:45:42]  Now, he also took up a hobby of lying about himself on the internet during this time.
[00:45:46]  He would claim to live in different countries than he did.
[00:45:48]  He would put up false Facebook posts to make it look like he was building houses in countries where he didn't reside, that sort of thing.
[00:45:54]  Jeff Wise wrote about this, quote, like many of McAfee's pranks, these gags are both fun and purposeful.
[00:46:00]  There are, he mentions, five civil lawsuits against him currently pending in the United States.
[00:46:04]  That's how it is in the States, he says.
[00:46:06]  If people know you have money, they'll sue you.
[00:46:08]  And his Facebook sham was just a harmless game of cat and mouse.
[00:46:11]  The judge in one case, he couldn't understand why I would put incorrect information about myself on the web, he says.
[00:46:16]  I told him when I put that up, I wasn't under oath.
[00:46:18]  He asked me why I would do such a thing.
[00:46:20]  I said, I thought that if somebody wanted to serve me papers, it would be much more enjoyable for everyone involved if they tried to serve those papers to me in Honduras.
[00:46:28]  So, John McAfee moves to Belize, just starts lying about himself to everyone he can.
[00:46:33]  Every journalist he can.
[00:46:34]  And around this time, he starts claiming in another interview that he started a business that's like rich people paying to watch other people do yoga because he claims that studies show that you gain benefits from exercise by watching people exercise.

=== Lying to Reporters (04:17) ===

[00:46:48]  Stop.
[00:46:48]  So he tells that to a journalist, but it's all just a lie.
[00:46:51]  Like he's just lying to reporters all the time.
[00:46:54]  This was a great plan.
[00:46:55]  Yeah.
[00:46:56]  We don't know where he lives.
[00:46:57]  We don't know if he's got money.
[00:46:59]  He's just lying to everyone about everything about him.
[00:47:02]  And if you're going to do the things that John McAfee is about to do, it helps to shoot some chaff out into the.
[00:47:08]  Maybe that's why I hit a long game here.
[00:47:09]  Yeah, it's the long game.
[00:47:11]  And if you're playing the long game, listener, then you might want some of the fine products and or services that support this podcast and or program.
[00:47:26]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:47:30]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:47:33]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:47:36]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:47:40]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:47:43]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:47:47]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:47:49]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:54]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:56]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:58]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:48:00]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:48:03]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:48:04]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:48:07]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:48:11]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:48:13]  Trust me, babe.
[00:48:14]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:24]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:48:29]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:48:34]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:48:40]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:48:49]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:48:54]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:48:57]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:49:00]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:49:02]  That's so funny.
[00:49:04]  Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:49:12]  Say you love me.
[00:49:15]  You know I.
[00:49:17]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:49:24]  What's up, everyone?
[00:49:25]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:49:26]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:49:34]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:49:37]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:49:40]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:49:45]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:49:48]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:49:52]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:49:57]  Yeah.
[00:49:57]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:50:00]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:50:01]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:50:10]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:50:12]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:50:20]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:50:22]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:50:23]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:50:24]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:50:33]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:50:39]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:50:44]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:50:48]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:50:51]  I doctored the test once.
[00:50:53]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:50:56]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:51:00]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:51:03]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.

=== Sociopathic Martinis (15:50) ===

[00:51:05]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:51:07]  Greg Olespi and Michael Marancine.
[00:51:09]  My mind was blown.
[00:51:11]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:51:13]  This is Love Trap.
[00:51:14]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:51:16]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:51:21]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Amaricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:51:28]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:51:32]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:51:42]  And we're back.
[00:51:42]  We're talking about John McAfee, who has just moved to Belize.
[00:51:46]  In 2010, during his second year there, he met a young doctor named Allison Adonisio.
[00:51:52]  Here's how she described her journey to Jeff Wise.
[00:51:55]  When I turned 30, I cried.
[00:51:56]  On paper, everyone envied me.
[00:51:57]  I just bought a house.
[00:51:58]  I had a partner and a job at Harvard.
[00:52:00]  I just gotten a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a three-year research program.
[00:52:04]  I realized that the prospect of spending another three years in the lab was incredibly depressing.
[00:52:07]  So I wrote a letter to a bunch of resorts in Belize asking if I could come down at work and play my guitar.
[00:52:13]  So this young woman who just finishes getting her medical degree flies down to Belize to spend like a year playing guitar, chilling out, and like living, having fun before.
[00:52:22]  I'm so envious of these lots.
[00:52:24]  And then I was just like, I want to go somewhere and play my guitar.
[00:52:27]  I want to fly an airbike.
[00:52:29]  Like, what the fuck kind of lives are these?
[00:52:31]  Like, which I get up and pay my bills every goddamn day.
[00:52:34]  I ain't flying no airbike and playing no damn guitar.
[00:52:37]  And then also the people that McAfee took with him to Brazil.
[00:52:40]  He's like, hey, y'all, y'all want to just come live in Bris or in Belize?
[00:52:43]  I think their job was just being part of his entourage.
[00:52:46]  Like they were just a millionaire's entourage and that's your gig.
[00:52:49]  That's a solid employment.
[00:52:50]  Well, and Allison found what she thought was solid employment this way.
[00:52:54]  So she winds up playing guitar at a bar where McAfee is and he starts talking to her.
[00:52:59]  And she talks to him about like the research that she wants to do and like what she's going to do when she goes back home.
[00:53:04]  And the research she was doing was in something called quorum testing.
[00:53:07]  So it's like a way to fight bacteria without using antibiotics.
[00:53:11]  It's like other kinds of substances that they don't kill bacteria, but they reprogram them so they're not dangerous.
[00:53:16]  So this is the research Allison wanted to get into, right?
[00:53:19]  So she tells McAfee about all this and he's like, hell, I'll fund your research.
[00:53:24]  I'm a crazy millionaire out here.
[00:53:26]  Because she's talking to him about like how, oh, yeah, they find a lot of these chemicals and like plants and stuff, like jungle plants.
[00:53:32]  There's a lot of different medicines in them.
[00:53:33]  And he's like, it's great.
[00:53:34]  That's great.
[00:53:34]  I'll give you a bunch of money.
[00:53:35]  You'll find medicine out here.
[00:53:37]  Like, so yeah, John McAfee hires this doctor lady, sight unseen, and decides he's going to get into the business of making medicine.
[00:53:44]  Okay.
[00:53:44]  Yeah.
[00:53:45]  Why not?
[00:53:45]  He's done so well in every other business.
[00:53:48]  Trains, planes, automobiles, autoimmune diseases.
[00:53:56]  Yeah.
[00:53:56]  It's the natural evolution of what he's into.
[00:54:00]  So funding Allison's research quickly turned into John McAfee buying a bunch of land in an isolated jungle chunk of Belize, building a compound there, and creating a laboratory for Dr. Adonisio to work in.
[00:54:11]  The stated goal of this lab was to find new bacteria fighting medicines.
[00:54:16]  But very quickly, things started to get weird.
[00:54:20]  Oh, I know, I know.
[00:54:22]  Is sex contest weird or you wish it was sex contest weird.
[00:54:27]  Although there's some sex stuff coming up.
[00:54:29]  Oh, gosh.
[00:54:30]  And I've been to Belize.
[00:54:31]  It's like very ugly there.
[00:54:33]  What?
[00:54:34]  Yeah.
[00:54:34]  Didn't like Belize.
[00:54:35]  No, hell no.
[00:54:36]  Like the beaches are gross.
[00:54:38]  There's a lot of jungle life and plants.
[00:54:40]  You don't like jungle life in Twitch?
[00:54:42]  And cashew plants.
[00:54:44]  What the fuck is that?
[00:54:45]  It's trash.
[00:54:46]  Don't go to Belize.
[00:54:47]  I'm going to say go to Belize.
[00:54:49]  Just don't be John McAfee.
[00:54:51]  Only go if you are John McAfee.
[00:54:53]  So he creates this plant.
[00:54:55]  So he creates this thing in the jungle, this lab in the jungle, and he moves his doctor out there.
[00:55:00]  And yeah, yeah, he starts inviting journalists over to his jungle compound to talk about his new venture, including our friend Jeff Wise at Fast Company.
[00:55:08]  Now, Jeff visited in early 2010, and at that time, most of McAfee's shit seemed to be together.
[00:55:13]  So McAfee said shit like, for 20 years, I played around, and now I'm serious about doing something positive.
[00:55:18]  So he's trying to like, I'm going to, you know, especially since you just got two people killed, I'm going to do a good thing here.
[00:55:24]  I'm going to give back to the world.
[00:55:25]  Right.
[00:55:25]  I'm going to provide, heal the planet.
[00:55:27]  So there were some signs that things might be wrong.
[00:55:30]  McAfee lied to Wise and told him that he and Dr. Adonisio had been working together for two years when they'd only been working together for seven months.
[00:55:38]  He also called her like a leading mind in the field when she was really just starting out.
[00:55:42]  Right.
[00:55:43]  So he's overselling.
[00:55:44]  He's playing guitar in a bar.
[00:55:46]  Yeah.
[00:55:47]  He oversells everything to reporters, but there is a lab.
[00:55:51]  They are working on stuff.
[00:55:52]  She seems to be seriously trying to do something.
[00:55:55]  But during that interview in 2010, McAfee kind of like suddenly dropped the information that his company mission had expanded beyond making medicine to making fuck drugs.
[00:56:06]  So.
[00:56:07]  Fuck drugs.
[00:56:08]  Fuck drugs.
[00:56:08]  So there were sex contests happening.
[00:56:11]  Probably.
[00:56:12]  I mean, between Mr. McAfee and himself.
[00:56:15]  He just can't stop.
[00:56:16]  He just can't stop.
[00:56:16]  So he, he basically, the way Allison told Jeff Wise, the journalist who's interviewing her, is that McAfee suddenly came to her with a brainstorm.
[00:56:24]  What if we tried to find like an herbal compound that would be a libido booster to women?
[00:56:30]  You know, then we could make a bunch of money, which we could use to fund our other research into medicine.
[00:56:34]  So is this like his own personal problem?
[00:56:36]  He's like, ladies are no longer aroused by me.
[00:56:39]  Can you make something?
[00:56:40]  He's like using this for his own drug combat.
[00:56:42]  He's like, can you make something that makes me sexier to women?
[00:56:45]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:56:46]  That might be what's going on.
[00:56:48]  So he was just trying to make like Spanish fly in a lab?
[00:56:51]  Yeah, it's also, I don't think he has much of an attention span.
[00:56:54]  Ugh, okay.
[00:56:55]  So that might be part of it.
[00:56:57]  Makes sense.
[00:56:57]  It's certainly part creepy, but it also might part be John McAfee can't focus on anything from what he's doing.
[00:57:01]  He was trying to save lives.
[00:57:03]  How do we go from saving lives to like those little dick pills that they fucking sell in the gas station?
[00:57:08]  He went from saving lives to like extense.
[00:57:12]  Like, what happened?
[00:57:14]  Yeah, that is a really quick amount of time to do it.
[00:57:16]  Huge leap.
[00:57:17]  Yeah.
[00:57:18]  So the next major article about John McAfee was published in late 2012 by Wired's Joshua Davis.
[00:57:24]  So in the two years between that fast company article where John announces that he is making fuck drugs in addition to medicine and 2012 when Wired gets on on things, John's condition degenerated substantially.
[00:57:36]  The Wired article revealed that McAfee had started spending increasing periods of time in an isolated town named Orange Walk, which was kind of near his drug-making compound.
[00:57:45]  Now, in emails to friends, John described Orange Walk as, quote, the asshole of the world.
[00:57:51]  He wrote in one email, quote, my fragile connection with the world of polite society has, without a doubt, been severed.
[00:57:57]  My attire would rank me among the worst-dressed Tijuana panhandlers.
[00:58:00]  My hygiene is no better.
[00:58:02]  Yesterday, for the first time, I urinated it in public in broad daylight.
[00:58:06]  So John's going through some shit.
[00:58:09]  Okay, yeah, them drugs catching up.
[00:58:11]  Or maybe, it may be drugs.
[00:58:13]  We will be talking about that.
[00:58:14]  It might be like the ones that he did in the past.
[00:58:16]  Yeah.
[00:58:16]  And maybe the guilt from killing his nephew and that old guy.
[00:58:19]  Oh, you think?
[00:58:21]  Maybe.
[00:58:21]  He has some sociopathic martinises.
[00:58:23]  I feel like he might have slept well on that one.
[00:58:26]  Either way, for whatever reason, when he first moves to Belize, he moves to this beautiful mansion on the beach in like a really nice part of Belize, like a resort part of town.
[00:58:34]  And he quickly leaves that to go build a compound in the jungle in like a place nobody goes, like where everybody's really poor and like it's not like a tourist spot.
[00:58:43]  So he like builds a compound in the jungle and then he leaves there to go hang out in a dirt poor small town and like sit around in a really grimy bar and watch prostitutes all day and not drink.
[00:58:54]  Like that's that's what John McAfee's life turns into at this point.
[00:58:58]  So while he's hanging out at that bar watching prostitutes, he gets to know several prostitutes.
[00:59:04]  What?
[00:59:05]  Everything.
[00:59:07]  Just being a weird old guy hanging out in a bar watching teenage prostitutes.
[00:59:11]  Oh, God.
[00:59:11]  Okay.
[00:59:12]  So he winds up falling in love with one of these teenage girls.
[00:59:16]  Of course he does.
[00:59:16]  Of course he does.
[00:59:17]  Natural.
[00:59:18]  A 16-year-old girl named Im Schweiler.
[00:59:21]  And 16 is the age of consent in Belize, so he's not committing a crime in Belize.
[00:59:25]  That is important.
[00:59:26]  Although, morally, I don't think 50, 60-year-olds should fuck 16-year-olds.
[00:59:32]  But there's no, it's not like illegal in Belize.
[00:59:35]  No, right.
[00:59:36]  So he dumps his longtime girlfriend for this 16-year-old prostitute.
[00:59:40]  He brings the prostitute, Im Schweiler, to his compound, and then she almost murders him.
[00:59:46]  According to that Wired article.
[00:59:48]  Shout out to her.
[00:59:50]  Shout out to her.
[00:59:51]  What's her name?
[00:59:52]  Im Schweiler?
[00:59:53]  Im Schweiler.
[00:59:54]  Yes, Im Schwiler.
[00:59:55]  Im Schweiler.
[00:59:55]  Im Schwilder.
[00:59:57]  Yeah.
[00:59:57]  According to Wired, quote, she slipped out of bed and pulled McAfee Smith and Wesson out of a holster hanging from an ancient Tibetan gong in his bedroom.
[01:00:04]  Her plan, if it could be called that, was to kill him and make off with as much cash as she could scrounge up.
[01:00:08]  She crept up to the foot of the bed, aimed, and started to pull the trigger.
[01:00:11]  But at the last moment, she closed her eyes and the bullet went wide, ripping through a pillow.
[01:00:15]  I guess I didn't want to kill the bastard, she admits.
[01:00:18]  So, this will not be the last time that one of John McAfee's lovers almost gets him murdered.
[01:00:23]  Also, he's old as hell, sis.
[01:00:24]  You definitely did not have to murder him to make off with his cash.
[01:00:27]  You could have just stole small amounts every day.
[01:00:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:30]  You know, you would have been fine.
[01:00:32]  I mean, maybe he's just the kind of guy you want to shoot.
[01:00:35]  He does seem that way.
[01:00:36]  So, after he moved to Belize, John's old entourage gradually faded away and was replaced by increasing numbers of young women, including the teenage Im Schwelder, and heavily armed Belizean men with criminal backgrounds.
[01:00:48]  Okay, so he became the R. Kelly of Belize.
[01:00:50]  Yeah, but like less evil, but shadier.
[01:00:54]  So, like, R. Kelly doesn't hang around with like convicted murderers and is always debatable.
[01:01:00]  Okay, R. Kelly isn't constantly photographed with gang members holding guns next to him, which McAfee is during this period.
[01:01:08]  There's always big, like, Belizean guys with criminal backgrounds holding, like, scoped rifles standing behind him with, like, a pack of wild dogs around him.
[01:01:16]  Every picture of John McAfee in Belize is he is shirtless.
[01:01:20]  He's surrounded by large Belizean men holding rifles and like a gaggle of teenage girls and a bunch of dogs.
[01:01:25]  So, this is like the El Chapo phase of his career.
[01:01:27]  Yeah, this is the Chapo phase of his career.
[01:01:30]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:01:31]  I would definitely say choppish.
[01:01:32]  Although, like R. Kelly, we are about to get into a rape allegation.
[01:01:37]  So, yeah.
[01:01:38]  I mean, that's not totally off base.
[01:01:40]  Yeah.
[01:01:41]  No, it's not shocking either.
[01:01:42]  All monsters have more in common with each other than they don't.
[01:01:46]  Absolutely.
[01:01:46]  I mean, this guy was doing sex contests, so we pretty much knew he was a deviant, you know, back in the day.
[01:01:51]  I was doing that.
[01:01:53]  I don't even know if that's deviant.
[01:01:55]  For all we know, he was assaulting people there.
[01:01:57]  Yeah, I mean, it might have been.
[01:01:58]  I haven't heard any allegations.
[01:01:59]  Yeah.
[01:02:00]  There's not allegations yet.
[01:02:01]  When those people were interviewed, most of them seemed to think fondly at that time, so it may have just been a bunch of weirdos having a fuck company together.
[01:02:07]  Listen, sometimes you get the right one.
[01:02:09]  Sometimes you find the right crew.
[01:02:11]  Okay.
[01:02:13]  So in 2011, John McAfee was raided by the Belizean authorities on suspicion of producing methamphetamine.
[01:02:19]  According to Wired's reporting, McAfee initially stormed out naked, wielding a handgun, but once he realized what was happening, he put down his gun and went inside to get pants.
[01:02:27]  He was arrested there by the Belizean police commandos.
[01:02:30]  When he was told they suspected him of making meth, he told them, that is a startling hypothesis, sir, because I haven't sold drugs since 1983.
[01:02:37]  Hey, he's telling the truth.
[01:02:39]  Telling the truth.
[01:02:40]  So the raid hauled out a bunch of guns and some unidentified crystalline chemical John claimed was related to he and Dr. Adonisio's work.
[01:02:47]  But Belize tested the substance and it wasn't meth or anything else illegal.
[01:02:51]  They weren't really sure what the hell it was.
[01:02:53]  To this day, there is no conclusive answer as to what exactly John McAfee was making in that jungle.
[01:02:58]  Although in part two, we will talk about the best theory.
[01:03:01]  It's worth noting this was right around the time when John McAfee started posting on the drug forum Blue Light about his growing affinity for bath salts, specifically a drug called MDPV.
[01:03:11]  Now, if you've never done MDPV, how would I describe MDPV?
[01:03:15]  It's too many letters for me.
[01:03:17]  I'm not doing a drug with more than two letters.
[01:03:19]  Oh, I love four-leather drugs.
[01:03:20]  CDP, QH.
[01:03:22]  Oh, man.
[01:03:22]  That sounds like my life will never be the same.
[01:03:25]  Oh, no.
[01:03:26]  MDPV is like if Adderall hit you in the face before it started to work.
[01:03:32]  Like, that's MDP.
[01:03:33]  It's like angry, pissed off Adderall.
[01:03:35]  That's how I describe MDPV.
[01:03:37]  You don't need drugs to be angry.
[01:03:39]  Kind of people who take MDPV.
[01:03:41]  That's one of the face-eating drugs.
[01:03:43]  Yeah, like these are the bath salts everybody was talking about back then.
[01:03:47]  God, no.
[01:03:48]  No.
[01:03:49]  When Wired talked to him, McAfee claimed that all of the writing he'd done about bath salts on the internet was actually just another gag to stir up the waters and confuse everybody.
[01:03:58]  So many lies.
[01:03:59]  Quote, it was the most tongue-in-cheek thing in the fucking world.
[01:04:01]  If I'm going to do drugs, I'm going to do something that I know is good.
[01:04:03]  I'm going to grab some mushrooms, number one, and maybe get some really fine cocaine.
[01:04:07]  So maybe that's true.
[01:04:09]  Maybe he was lying about bath salts on the internet to throw everyone off the case.
[01:04:13]  But I have read through the posts that he put up on Blue Light.
[01:04:17]  They're pretty intricate.
[01:04:18]  John posts pictures of lab equipment and asks for very technical advice on how to produce a drug he seems to know a lot about.
[01:04:24]  Other people in the forum who are drug chemists, like give him serious answers.
[01:04:29]  It's not just, you know, bro, this drug's awesome talk.
[01:04:32]  It's like shop talk from chemist to chemist.
[01:04:35]  So maybe it's all a scam or maybe him trying to make it into a scam is the scam and John McAfee was doing a shitload of bath salts.
[01:04:42]  It would make some of this make more sense.
[01:04:44]  It's a scam because nobody asked for like no one asked for specific detail information about making drugs.
[01:04:51]  It was like, no, this is another one of my hijinks.
[01:04:53]  It's one of my hijinks, John.
[01:04:54]  You're talking for pages about how to like distill this stuff properly.
[01:04:58]  I got you.
[01:04:59]  I got you, suckers.
[01:05:01]  You had all those pages, didn't you?
[01:05:03]  No, you literally had chemicals in your house.
[01:05:05]  You had pictures of beakers and you're doing stuff.
[01:05:08]  Yeah, I was trying to make Superman.
[01:05:11]  Whatever the truth about John's experimentation with bath salts, his behavior after this point ratchet up to a level of intensity that I think crosses the line into madness and may in fact be the result of a bath salt.
[01:05:21]  Dangerous drug addiction.
[01:05:22]  Maybe bath salts.
[01:05:23]  Maybe something else.
[01:05:25]  But you remember that 16-year-old prostitute he was in love with, M. Schwalder?
[01:05:28]  Yes, M. Schwalder, who tried to shoot him.
[01:05:30]  Who tried to shoot him, but then didn't.
[01:05:31]  Well, she started telling him dire stories about a nearby town called Carmelita, which shout out to Warren Sivon.
[01:05:38]  She said was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, basically.
[01:05:41]  She starts telling him this town is filled with monstrous criminals who rape and torture with impunity and it's a big like secret drug hub network and all this terrible stuff.
[01:05:49]  So he kept her around after she tried to shoot him?
[01:05:51]  Oh yeah, of course.
[01:05:51]  Did he not wake up when the gun went on?
[01:05:53]  No, he did.
[01:05:53]  And he took the gun out of her hands, but he forgave her.
[01:05:55]  He was like, girl, quit playing.
[01:05:56]  He just gave her a separate bungalow.
[01:05:58]  Yeah.
[01:06:00]  That's kind of...
[01:06:02]  That's not the only time he does that.
[01:06:04]  Damn.
[01:06:06]  He's forgiving.
[01:06:06]  He's forgiving.
[01:06:07]  I'll give that to John McAfee.
[01:06:09]  Listen.
[01:06:10]  You try to kill us.
[01:06:12]  Stay angry.
[01:06:12]  He's like, oh, my God, go to the guest house.
[01:06:15]  Give me the gun and Schwilder.
[01:06:16]  You're not even the second person to shoot at me today.
[01:06:19]  I'm John McAfee.
[01:06:23]  So McAfee told Wired later, quote, Carmelita was literally the Wild West.
[01:06:29]  I didn't realize that two miles away was the most corrupt village on the planet.
[01:06:32]  So McAfee says that out of concern that this teenager who tried to kill him, like, was telling the truth about this dangerous town, he basically decided to become Batman there.
[01:06:42]  So McAfee's next big move is to start using his wealth to fight crime in the town of Carmel.
[01:06:47]  Great.
[01:06:47]  Bruce Wayne.
[01:06:48]  Yeah, Bruce Wayne.
[01:06:49]  So he buys a small cement house and hires workers to basically build a jail because the town hadn't had a jail.

=== Wild West Corruption (06:00) ===

[01:06:56]  He calls the cops responsible for the area and tells them to start arresting people.
[01:07:00]  And when the police were like, we don't really have any equipment to do that with, he starts buying M16s, boots, pepper spray, stun guns, and shit like that.
[01:07:08]  M16s?
[01:07:09]  You could just get them handguns.
[01:07:10]  They need to.
[01:07:11]  Fuck no.
[01:07:12]  John McAfee says this is serious crime going on here.
[01:07:15]  I need to be able to shoot 20 people at one time.
[01:07:18]  Some people who actually lived in the area said that McAfee basically made himself a private army and started issuing orders to like go after people that he didn't like.
[01:07:27]  And he starts, he confronts some of these people that he says are criminals with like guns in their own homes.
[01:07:32]  And it's like.
[01:07:33]  He's like low-key colonizing belief.
[01:07:35]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:07:36]  He's a one-man colonizer.
[01:07:38]  He's a one-man colonizer.
[01:07:40]  And this is a poor ass, like the journalist, Josh Smith, the journalist, actually went to Carmelita to try and see, like, is this a dangerous no-man's land?
[01:07:47]  Like, did he stumble onto a real terrible place that needs fixing?
[01:07:50]  And he just finds a poor village filled with people who had no fucking idea what John did.
[01:07:54]  This is the most Caucasian shit I have ever heard.
[01:07:57]  I have ever, I don't think anybody has lived a whiter white man life than John McAfee.
[01:08:02]  He did everything.
[01:08:03]  He did everything.
[01:08:04]  He's done all the white man.
[01:08:06]  He did everything.
[01:08:06]  He started a company based off lies.
[01:08:08]  He scammed his way.
[01:08:10]  No, and this ends with him running for president.
[01:08:12]  Oh my God.
[01:08:18]  Shout out to him.
[01:08:19]  He did.
[01:08:19]  He taught Yohan how to compound his bingo card.
[01:08:23]  No, but he across the board, through the middle, the free space, everything.
[01:08:28]  And I'm such a white guy.
[01:08:29]  I didn't even realize that until you said it.
[01:08:31]  Like, yeah, he did do everything that a white guy can do.
[01:08:36]  Listen, this is what I will say about McAfee.
[01:08:38]  You talk about take advantage of some privilege.
[01:08:40]  Yes, motherfucker took advantage to the fullest extent.
[01:08:43]  He squeezed all of the juice out of whiteness.
[01:08:46]  I'm not even mad at it.
[01:08:48]  There is no more white privilege left in his privilege sponge.
[01:08:51]  He is wrong it out.
[01:08:53]  Every drop.
[01:08:54]  I'm not mad at it.
[01:08:56]  I'm really not mad at it.
[01:08:59]  Yeah.
[01:08:59]  So one of the village elders who that journalist Joshua Smith interviewed said, I thought he would come by, introduce himself, and explain what he was doing here, but he never did.
[01:09:07]  He just showed up and started telling us what to do.
[01:09:14]  And it worked.
[01:09:17]  Well, I don't think there was much crime to stop, but he got to play Batman for a while.
[01:09:21]  I don't even think that girl told him there was some crime there.
[01:09:25]  He probably made that shit up.
[01:09:26]  He was like, my girlfriend that I found at the bar.
[01:09:30]  Oh, God, John.
[01:09:31]  So now, at this point, Dr. Adonisio, who's remember, still trying to make medicine here, started worrying about John McAfee.
[01:09:38]  Over the months they'd worked together, she'd noticed him hiring more and more armed men.
[01:09:42]  She'd also noticed that his room at the compound was filled with literal garbage bags of money and boxes of Viagra and other unidentified pharmaceuticals.
[01:09:50]  She decided to leave the country.
[01:09:51]  And in 2012, when that Wired article was written, that's all anyone knew about the end of their working relationship.
[01:09:56]  She just told Wired basically, like, I just, I just left, you know?
[01:09:59]  Four years later, in 2016, Dr. Adonisio talked to Nanette Bernstein for a Showtime documentary on John McAfee's life.
[01:10:07]  She gave a very different story then, one that paints John McAfee not as a fun, wacky, libertarian, kooky character, but as a monster.
[01:10:16]  And we're going to play an excerpt from that right now.
[01:10:19]  He would talk about how he could have people hurt or killed.
[01:10:23]  And, you know, honestly, I was, I was scared.
[01:10:31]  I planned to leave, but I needed to figure out how to do it, you know?
[01:10:37]  I went to talk to him.
[01:10:39]  I sat there on the couch and I told him everything.
[01:10:42]  I said, Look, I don't like what you're doing.
[01:10:45]  I'm not getting anywhere with my work.
[01:10:48]  I feel undermined.
[01:10:49]  And I miss my family.
[01:10:53]  I want to go home.
[01:10:56]  And, you know, I had a headache.
[01:10:58]  I was crying so much.
[01:11:00]  I told him I had a headache and he brought me, you know, he went into the other room and he brought me Two pills and a glass of orange juice.
[01:11:16]  And so I took them.
[01:11:19]  I, you know, and I took a sip of the orange juice and it tasted foul.
[01:11:25]  It tasted bitter.
[01:11:29]  I'm such an idiot.
[01:11:31]  I remember I made a joke about not being able to get good orange juice in a place called Orange Walk.
[01:11:37]  Like, I honestly.
[01:11:44]  So she claims that basically she blacked out after that point.
[01:11:50]  Something was in the orange juice pretty clearly.
[01:11:53]  And she has snatches of memory.
[01:11:54]  One of them is John McAfee standing over her naked.
[01:11:59]  She alleges that he raped her.
[01:12:01]  It seems like a pretty credible allegation to me.
[01:12:05]  Also, it doesn't seem...
[01:12:06]  I don't have a whole lot of trouble imagining John McAfee being a rapist after everything we've talked about.
[01:12:11]  Stockpiling by Agra?
[01:12:12]  Yeah.
[01:12:13]  So she was just trying to leave.
[01:12:14]  She was just trying to.
[01:12:15]  Obviously, what?
[01:12:16]  I mean, the fact that she went off with this millionaire to a compound to like try to do drug research, that was all crazy.
[01:12:24]  But like...
[01:12:24]  But it's the kind of crazy anyone, you get them at the right point with the right thing.
[01:12:28]  If you're the type of person who leaves the country to go play guitar, chances are like, yeah, you would, why not take a chance?
[01:12:34]  And obviously it had gone okay.
[01:12:38]  He didn't put in the money to build.
[01:12:40]  That's the only thing he said he was going to do.
[01:12:41]  But like, she came to you and said that she wanted to go home.
[01:12:45]  Like, that is just so disgusting.
[01:12:48]  Yeah.
[01:12:48]  Like, oh, what a piece of shit.
[01:12:51]  Yeah.
[01:12:51]  Yeah.
[01:12:52]  And this is a dark and terrible note to end our first episode.

=== Dark Episode Finale (03:55) ===

[01:12:56]  But it's the note that we're going to end on.
[01:12:57]  And the next episode starts with murder.
[01:12:59]  So buckle up.
[01:13:01]  Enjoy that.
[01:13:02]  Lacey, you want to plug your pluggables before we roll off?
[01:13:05]  Damn, I need to distance myself from that.
[01:13:08]  Yeah, I know.
[01:13:09]  I didn't know where to stick that, but I felt like the very end, you know.
[01:13:13]  If you like stuff.
[01:13:14]  No.
[01:13:19]  The sentence, that poor woman, is just the worst way to lead into any kind of pivot.
[01:13:23]  Right.
[01:13:24]  That poor woman.
[01:13:25]  If you're looking for a bed.
[01:13:27]  You like set.
[01:13:28]  No.
[01:13:30]  Yeah, but shout out to her.
[01:13:31]  So sad.
[01:13:33]  I'm scam goddess.
[01:13:35]  I do love scams, but I don't hurt people, guys.
[01:13:37]  I swear.
[01:13:37]  Yeah.
[01:13:38]  Good natured scams.
[01:13:39]  Yeah, good natured scams.
[01:13:40]  That's not me.
[01:13:40]  But yeah, so look out for my podcast, Scam Goddess.
[01:13:43]  If you follow me on Twitter at Diva Lacey, D-I-V-A-L-A-C-I, or on Instagram at Diva Lacey, D-I-V-A-L-A-C-I, I'll have more updates there.
[01:13:52]  And I'm Robert Evans.
[01:13:53]  You can find me on Twitter at IWriteOK.
[01:13:56]  You can find this podcast on the internet at behindthebastards.com.
[01:13:59]  You can find us on Instagram and Twitter at at BastardsPod.
[01:14:02]  You can buy t-shirts.
[01:14:04]  You can buy cups.
[01:14:05]  You can buy stickers.
[01:14:07]  You can buy the mummified hand of an Egyptian pharaoh, all on tpublic.com, all branded with behind the bastards logos and special mummy fighting witchcraft.
[01:14:19]  Buy it.
[01:14:20]  Products.
[01:14:21]  Yay!
[01:14:27]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:14:36]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:14:38]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:14:40]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:14:42]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:14:47]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:14:48]  Trust me, babe.
[01:14:49]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:14:58]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:15:04]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
[01:15:07]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:15:10]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:15:12]  so funny with me each night each morning listen to nora jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts what's up everyone I'm Ago Moda my next guest it's Will Farrell my dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:15:38]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:15:39]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:15:46]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:15:49]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:15:56]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:15:58]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:15:59]  There's a lot in life.
[01:16:01]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:16:08]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:16:15]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:16:19]  I doctored the test once.
[01:16:20]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:16:25]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:16:28]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[01:16:30]  My mind was blown.
[01:16:31]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:16:33]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:16:34]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:16:36]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:16:40]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:16:47]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:16:49]  Guaranteed human.