John McAfee claimed the US government 'wants to make an example out of me' in a final plea before he was found hanging in his Spanish jail cell on Wednesday in an apparent suicide that his lawyer says came as a complete surprise.

The 75-year-old died at the jail outside Barcelona just hours after a court approved his extradition to the US where he was wanted for tax evasion and fraud.

Spanish authorities insist that there was no evidence of foul play, but McAfee's previous tweets that he would never take his own life 'a la Epstein' have fuelled conspiracy theories. 

'I am content in here.

I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine,' McAfee tweeted on October 15. 

McAfee was collared at Barcelona airport at the request of the US Justice Department on October 3, about to board a flight to Istanbul with a British passport.

During a court hearing last month, McAfee said that he would spend the rest of his life in jail if convicted in America.

'I am hoping that the Spanish court will see the injustice of this,' he said, adding 'the United States wants to use me as an example.' 

His lawyer Javier Villalba said said McAfee's death had come as a surprise to his wife and other relatives, adding he would seek to get 'to the bottom' of his client's death.

'I had constant telephone contacts with him,' Villalba said.

'At no point had he shown any special worry or clue that could let us think this could have happened.' 

'This has been like pouring cold water on the family and on his defense team,' the lawyer said. 'Nobody expected it, he had not said goodbye.' 

The sense of foreboding in McAfee's tweets and in particular, his obsession with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein has cast doubts on his apparent suicide. 

Epstein was found hanged in his prison cell in Manhattan in August 2019 but many believe he was assassinated to stop him from implicating wealthy elites in a child sex trafficking ring. 

Although Villalba said that he had no evidence of any foul play, he blamed McAfee's death on 'the cruelty of the system' for keeping a 75-year-old behind bars for economic and not violent crimes after judges refused to release him on bail.

'We had managed to nullify seven of the 10 counts he was accused of and even so he was still that dangerous person who could be fleeing Spain if he was released?' the lawyer said.

'He was a world eminence, where could he hide?'

Spain's National Court on Monday ruled that McAfee should be extradited to the U.S. to face charges for evading more than $4 million in the fiscal years 2016 to 2018. The judge dropped seven of the 10 counts in the initial indictment.

Villalba said that McAfee had learned about the ruling shortly after on Monday and that his death on Wednesday didn't come in the heat of the moment.

He also said that the legal team had been preparing with him an appeal to avoid being extradited.

A penitentiary source told AP that McAfee was sharing a cell in the Brians 2 jail, but that at the moment of his death he had been alone.

McAfee - who had sold his company to Intel for $7.7 billion in 2010 - had lived in a self-imposed exile for years, globe-trotting and living on his 'Freedom Boat' in the Caribbean after being accused of murdering his neighbor in Belize in 2012. 

He always denied the murder but had been ordered to pay $25 million by a court in Florida in 2015 which found him 'liable' for expat Gregory Viant Faull's death. 

US authorities claimed he had earned millions over the last decade, failed to pay taxes and accused him of fraud by touting cryptocurrencies to his millions of Twitter followers in order to inflate prices and rake in profits.   

He finally fled the US in January 2019, leaving his heavily-fortified Tennessee compound with his former prostitute wife Janice after claiming a Grand Jury was convened to indict him on tax-related charges. 

In June 2019, while claiming he was trapped in Cuba, McAfee tweeted: 'I've collected files on corruption in governments.

For the first time, I'm naming names and specifics. I'll begin with a corrupt CIA agent and two Bahamian officials.

'Coming today. If I'm arrested or disappear, 31+ terrabytes of incriminating data will be released to the press.' 

McAfee's tweets to that effect and his correspondence with prominent figures have been the focus of much conjecture about his demise today.

Eric Weinstein, a political commentator, mathematician and investor, revealed a tweet sent to him by McAfee last year in which he asked him about Epstein and whether the paedophile had been connected to intelligence agencies.

Weinstein had previously revealed meeting Epstein in the early 2000s. 

In the message sent via Twitter on March 13, 2020, McAfee writes: 'I watched one of your interviews about Epstein. Awesome interview.

Was he connected to an intelligence Agency? Where did his fortune come from? Why no one has spiken (sic) with Wexler ...  etc.'

He continues: 'I am mire unterested (sic), however, in how he met his death, and its bizarre circumstances and manipulations.' 

Sharing the message last night, Weinstein said that not only had he met Epstein in the early 2000s, but also that the financier had been 'asking after me in a late email just before he died.

I have no idea why.' 

Weinstein said he had no recent contact with McAfee but was 'quite concerned now given John's 2020 call.'

Another tweet which has generated a lot of interest is a photo that McAfee took of a tattoo he got in November 2019, which says: '$WHACKD.'

Accompanying the picture, he wrote: 'Getting subtle messages from U.S.
officials saying, in effect: 'We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself'. I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm. $WHACKD available only on website class="mol-para-with-font">He had founded a meme cryptocurrency called WHACKD which he was promoting, as well as suggesting that people wanted to kill him.

A poster promoting the token which he shared a few days before depicted Hillary Clinton holding a slice of pizza and looking at a pair of feet dangling in the air as if from someone who had been hanged.

'Epstein didn't kill himself,' the poster said.