If you have kept up on the continuing John McAfee series here at SiliconANGLE, you may recognize that the elements surrounding McAfee in Belize were filled with not only dangerous situations, but also some very dangerous people.

As his world in Belize started to close in around him, he decided to gain the upper hand.  That’s when he launched his pre-loaded keylogging pirate network against those that had been behind the raid.  McAfee sought to capture information ordering the acts against him, and with this capture of data and selected informants he was successful in doing just that.

McAfee strikes back

McAfee keylogger screenshot

Today, McAfee’s ring of spy computers is still spreading, still collecting information – more than he can process actually, as he now reports several thousands of hours of recording. He also has reports finding much more than the campaign against him, things like payoffs to politicians, relationships with drug lords, retaliations and all around corruption.

Since releasing the last article describing the culture of corruption that exists in Belize, emails have poured in here to my mailbox confirming these conditions.  Several have stated they felt that the raid incident involving McAfee was staged, and he is indeed a man in an extraordinary situation.

It’s a game of selective gang activity enforcement,  state-sponsored gang raids are ordered to strike rising street lords down, while the same forces leave other more organized groups untouched.    These are the forces that were sent to his property in Belize and McAfee feels that the raid on his home there was an action that was not only a message, but an act of retaliation for his defiance.

The rest of the Belize crew:

McAfee has campaigned on his personal site against these men: a cast and crew that he states have been involved in his affairs, going back to Belize and beyond.  It is important to consider the background of a number of critical parties, as they answer to little authority.   We discussed Prime Minister Dean Barrow previously, who oversees the GSU force that raided McAfee’s property.

Now we look at some of the other characters:

Elvin Penner

Elvin Penner is one of the names that McAfee has introduced in his public exposure of Belizean corruption.  McAfee has been discussing the matter of Belizean passports for sale since January 2013 citing evidence gathered from his keylog network.   Elvin Penner has been in the middle of a passport scandal for the last several months, ultimately being dismissed from his job as Minister of State. He is implicated in a scheme where a South Korean national, Wonhong Kim, was able to obtain Belizean nationality and a Belizean passport.  Kim was in a Taiwan jail at the time the forms were falsified.

He also still holds his position as Area Representative of Cayo East and refuses to resign.  McAfee has pointed to Penner as being close to the next man, John Zabaneh in an extended passport scheme.

John Zabaneh

John Zabaneh is a Belizean businessman of Palestinian heritage.  McAfee has never had any official dealings with Zabaneh, but has indicated that this is a man who has been central in coordinating the security of their smuggling operation and central in the acquisition of passports at the will of the Sinaloa cartel.  He also reportedly keeps close company with government officials.  His chain of businesses employs many in the country, via a supermarket chain, an investments group, a chemicals company, a vacation company, and a produce operation called Mayan King .  His ability to hold assets and do business with anyone in the US came to halt fairly recently.  In an August 2012 press release the US Treasury Department identified John Zabaneh and two of his associates, naming them kingpins of the drug trade in Belize:

Today’s action, pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act), prohibits U.S. persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions with these individuals and companies, and also freezes any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction.

“John Zabaneh’s drug trafficking activities and his organization’s ties to Colombian sources of supply and Mexican buyers make him a critical figure in the narcotics trade,” said OFAC Director Adam J. Szubin.  “By designating Zabaneh, OFAC is disrupting those activities and continuing its efforts, alongside those of our law enforcement partners, to expose operatives of Chapo Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel, including their businesses.”

Zabaneh, of course, denies this.  To wit, he denies even knowing who Chapo Guzman was at the time he was identified by the State Department.

Zabaneh the banana farmer

I personally spoke to Zabaneh the week of Chapo Guzman’s Feb 2014 arrest and his story is the same – he does not know this man, he’s an honest businessman, and all of this is fiction.  Two days later, Zabaneh boldly held a press conference steps from the US embassy insisting he was a simple banana farmer who drove in a convoy of salvaged title vehicles and that he wanted his life back, insisting that somebody publicly ask Guzman if he knows Zabaneh or has ever had any dealings with him.

At the time Zabaneh was named by the US Treasury department, he was publicly defended by Prime Minister Dean Barrow, stating the information that must have led to the announcement was news to him and that business within the country should continue.

Gaspar and Eduardo Vega

Gaspar Vega is the Deputy Prime Minister of Belize.  He is also the representative for the Orange Walk district where McAfee’s property is located. He is now a much smaller figure than he was at one time in McAfee’s life, now that the raid fades into McAfee’s history, but it is his brother Eduardo Vega who still looms rather large.  According to several informants, Eduardo Vega is perhaps as powerful a man as Zabaneh himself, but choosing to stay behind the scenes.  Those same informants point to the contract on McAfee’s life having been arranged by Vega to operatives of the Sinaloa cartel.

An unfolding plot

John McAfee is a man who clearly made enough enemies at one time that his property was raided in a fruitless attempt to turn up something he could be charged for.

In my investigation, I’ve confirmed what appears to be a chain of powerful men that ordered and assisted with support in that raid.  These same men just happen to be just a step or two away from the most powerful international criminal organization in the Western hemisphere, according to US officials.

The continued release of information from McAfee indicates that criminals and government officials have conspired on events that do and do not relate directly to the raid on his compound in Belize and subsequent ties to his time in residence there.  McAfee sees this as the continuation of the message sent to him that day in Belize.  Except this time, he knows more, has more, and must be silenced.

We’ll continue forward to the incidents in Portland, cover McAfee’s life on the run and work our way over to some other characters that McAfee has discovered.

Photos courtesy of WhoisMcAfee.com, US Dept of Treasury

Keep reading SiliconANGLE for the rest of the posts the McAfee series.

John McAfee’s Ultimate Hack.

Deconstructing McAfee.

John McAfee in Belize, land of pirates.