In June 2021, reports surfaced that antivirus software pioneer John McAfee had hung himself to death in a Spanish jail where he was waiting to be extradited to the United States on charges of tax evasion. However, in the Netflix documentary about McAfee titled Running With the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, his former girlfriend Samantha Herrera claims that McAfee had called her from Spain after news of his death broke and told her that he had paid off certain people in order to fake his death.

Herrara’s exact comments were, “I don’t know if I should say, but two weeks ago, after his death, I got a call from Texas: ‘It’s me, John. I paid off people to pretend that I am dead, but I am not dead.’” She went on to claim that McAfee told her, “there are only three persons in this world that know I’m still alive.”

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In the documentary, Herrera revealed that she had started dating McAfee when she was 18 years old. The two of them were living in San Pedro, Belize but had escaped after the mysterious death of their neighbour, Gregory Faull, who was a Florida native. She also claimed that McAfee had connected the Belizean government to corrupt activities, and this led him to be named as a person of interest in a murder investigation.

Running With the Devil director Charlie Russell has opened up regarding Herrera’s claims in an interview with Esquire. He said, “I don’t know what I think and I don’t think she does”, further adding, “She says it, then she looks at the camera, and I can’t work out whether she thinks it’s real or not. She’s someone who was very angry at John.”

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Notably, McAfee had tweeted out on a number of occasions before his death that the US government was planning to kill him. He had also got a tattoo saying “$WHACKED” in order to echo such sentiments.