John McAfee House: The Estates He Sold for a Fraction of Their Cost

John McAfee spent a reported $25 million developing a 280-acre estate outside Woodland Park, Colorado, with a main house of more than 10,000 square feet and uninterrupted views of Pikes Peak. He wanted $20 million for it. In May 2007, it sold at auction for $5.72 million.

That was the fourth property his auctioneer had sold for him in three years, following a 1,044-acre oceanfront plantation in Hawaii, a villa in Texas, and another Hawaiian estate. He then moved to Belize, built a jungle compound, fled the country in 2012, and watched the compound burn. He died in a Spanish prison cell in June 2021, by which point he was reportedly broke.

This guide traces that sequence property by property.

The properties he sold at auction

Property	Location	Sale price
Estate of about 280 acres, main house over 10,000 sq ft	Woodland Park, Colorado	$5.72 million, May 2007
Oceanfront plantation, 1,044 acres	Hawaii	$3.13 million
Villa	Port Isabel, Texas	$2.2 million
Oceanfront estate	Molokai, Hawaii	$1.7 million

Who was John McAfee?

John McAfee was a British-American programmer and businessman, born in 1945, who founded McAfee Associates in 1987 and effectively created the commercial antivirus industry. He left the company in 1994. He later ran twice for the United States presidency as a libertarian and became a prominent and erratic promoter of cryptocurrency.

He told his biographer that the roughly $100 million he took out of the antivirus business “goes very quickly.” The property record below is a substantial part of the explanation.

He was arrested in Spain in 2020 on United States tax charges, and was found dead in his cell on 23 June 2021 while awaiting extradition. Authorities ruled the death a suicide.

The Colorado estate, and the scale of the loss

The Woodland Park property sat on roughly 280 acres near Pikes Peak, about eighteen miles west of Colorado Springs. The main house ran over 10,000 square feet, with five bedroom suites, nine fireplaces, hand-carved doors and flagstone floors, positioned for unobstructed views of the 14,110-foot peak.

McAfee is reported to have spent around $25 million developing it. His agent said at the time that he hoped to see $20 million. The May 2007 auction produced $5.72 million, from the Chicago commodities trader Jeffrey Patrick Wu.

Against development costs of roughly $25 million, that is a loss in the region of $19 to $20 million on a single property. It is among the largest single-property losses documented anywhere on this site, and it happened before the 2008 crash rather than because of it.

The other three auctions in the same run tell the same story at a smaller scale. Between them, the four properties realised around $12.75 million, which is not a portfolio being managed so much as one being emptied.

Belize

From around 2007, McAfee relocated to Belize. He built a compound in the Orange Walk District, deep in rainforest and a long way from any city, and at various points held several properties in the country, including a beach compound at San Pedro that he described as containing five houses.

In 2012, his neighbour Gregory Faull was found dead. Belize police sought McAfee for questioning as a person of interest. He was never charged with a criminal offence, and he left the country rather than speak to them; in an episode, he publicised himself heavily.

The jungle compound he had spent years building was later burned to the ground. He never returned to Belize.

Tennessee, and the years after

After leaving Belize, he moved through several places before settling for a period in Lexington, in north-west Tennessee, where he lived in what contemporaneous reporting described as a heavily fortified house. He was arrested there in 2015 on drink-driving and firearm charges.

He subsequently spent his later years abroad, moving between countries including Russia, Norway and Spain, largely on a yacht and largely to avoid United States authorities.

In October 2020, he was indicted for tax evasion. The Department of Justice alleged that he had failed to file returns between 2014 and 2018 despite substantial income, and that he had concealed assets, including real property, a vehicle and a yacht, in other people’s names. Those were allegations in an indictment that was never tried, because he died before extradition.

Was he broke when he died?

Reporting after his death said so, and the evidence points that way, though with an important caveat.

He had sold his major American properties by 2007, lost the Belize compound, and by the end was living on a boat and in rented accommodation abroad. His biographer said publicly that McAfee could not afford to pay him. His own account of the antivirus money running out is on the record.

The caveat is that the tax indictment specifically alleged he had hidden assets in others’ names. If that allegation was correct, then “broke” describes what was visible rather than what existed. It was never tested in court, so neither version can be treated as established. What is documented is that nothing was left in his own name that anyone has identified.

What happened to his houses

McAfee died in 2021, so the question of where he lives does not apply. The properties went in four different directions.

The Colorado estate passed to a private buyer at auction in 2007 and has changed hands since; it is a private residence with no connection to him. The Hawaiian and Texas properties likewise sold to private buyers. The Belize compound was destroyed by fire. No property in Tennessee or elsewhere has been publicly identified as remaining in his estate.

The overall arc, from roughly $100 million to nothing across three decades, with property doing much of the destroying, has few parallels. The closest on this site are the collapses documented in the accounts of Caroline Ellison and of Harvey Weinstein’s property sales, though in both of those cases the assets were sold rather than simply lost.

Sources

• Daily Herald and The Gazette on the Woodland Park estate, its size and features, the May 2007 auction, the buyer, and the three earlier auctions in Hawaii and Texas.
• ABC News Australia on his move to Belize, the 2012 death of his neighbour, his flight from the country, and his later years.
• United States Department of Justice for the 2020 tax indictment and its allegations about concealed property.
• Radio NWTN on his residence in Lexington, Tennessee, and his death in Spain.