Inside John McAfee’s Wild Empire: Millions, Betrayal, & His Disappearance
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How did Kyle’s childhood arson incidents shape his later criminal career?
This video that John McAfee did for me right after I got arrested, he's like, Kyle was the smartest con man I ever known. Even the antivirus itself was a scam. He reaches out to me, he's like, listen, I need help. What do you think happened with McAfee? John was... I've always flirted with crime, I guess. I had that... I hate to say it like that.
Right.
You know, where I was that kid in school that never lived up to his full potential. I got decent grades, but I was completely bored. When I was 10 years old, me and a group of friends, we would hang out at the local putt-putt in Oakland Mills, a neighborhood in Columbia, and come to find out later that the man that owned it was having problems and needed the insurance money. We were 10. He paid us 500 bucks. We burned it down. We burned it down. But
it gets better than that. How does that conversation even start with a 10-year-old? You guys need some – I have this gasoline can and a lighter.
No, I had gotten in trouble for starting a brush fire like in the woods.
So you
were
known – So, you know, we're talking to this guy, Big Rod. That's his name, Big Black Dude. And, you know, we have a little BMX, Huffy Bikes. It's like five of us all together. And, you know, he talks to me and my friend, Sean, and he offers us $500. We're 10 years old. That's all the money in the world
to
burn this thing down. So we go at night to do this. It's like 10 o'clock at night, which when you're 10 years old, that's late. It's not like 3 o'clock is now, but... We ride our bikes over to the putt putt and we, you know, put some gas and do whatever we're supposed to do. And then I think about the fact that there's 15 video game machines in there. And we're about to burn this place down. So we go back to the house to get pillowcases to take all the money out of the video games. This is really important because this is how we get caught. So we have the keys because we're going to burn the place down. And we open the doors and everything like that. Nobody expects anything. There's no police around or anything like this.
This is 1985 or 86. And we go back to... put the gas down to make the fire. We get the pillowcases, go back to unload all the video game money. We've got, like, it's heavy. Quarters are heavy, especially for a 10-year-old on a bicycle. We've got pillowcases filled with quarters. We burn the thing down. The fire trucks come and all this kind of stuff. Weeks go by. They're investigating it. But, you know, we're 10, and we're in our school buying every kid in the school ice cream with all these quarters. And finally, one of the kids... that goes gets caught you know why are you buying so much ice cream go back to a locker there's a pillowcase full of quarters and the principal wants to know where we got the quarter from and so that was my first experience with rats kid this kid this you know we're in the hold your mud how's your mud little timmy
we're like
in fifth grade I don't know if you had any trouble in elementary school but you know you're sitting in the principal's office all lined up knees are shaking the secretaries are looking at you like you've robbed the bank because we've burnt the putt putt down and you know he's in there oh well Kyle and me and Sean we went and we burned the putt putt down and we took all the quarters out of the machines and of course the police came and we did a diversion but that was my first Just
another
arson job. Just another arson job.
An arson job
in my first experience with the 5K1, but it wasn't called
that back
in elementary
school. What did your parents say? Your nice Jewish parents that are adopting orphans with heart problems. I mean, they've
had me for 10 years. Everything
else is good. They already know it's a problem. They already know it's a
problem. It's
not his first arson job. I stole a $20
bill from my mom's purse when I was like five or six
or something. You stole a what?
A $20 bill
from my mom's purse. They knew it was coming.
They knew that was
coming.
So I'm banned from talking to all these other kids and they can't come over and we can't play with each other anymore.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
How did Kyle’s childhood arson incidents shape his later criminal career?
0:00–44:16
2
What was the “Future 10 Central” incubator and how did John McAfee get involved?
44:16–51:19
3
How did Kyle turn his $10 million DroidGuy sale into a venture fund and the Roundhouse incubator?
51:19–1:05:06
4
Why did McAfee and Kyle launch a libertarian presidential campaign and what impact did it have?
1:05:06–1:20:27
5
What led Kyle to flee after the FBI target letter and how did he assume a new identity?
1:20:27–1:37:18
6
How did Kyle’s experiences in federal prison shape his post‑release consulting business?
1:37:18–1:40:31
Speakers
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