John McAfee Didn't Own a Condo in Collapsed Florida Building
The Claim
Computer programmer John Mcafee owned property in the building that recently collapsed in Surfside, Florida.
Emerging story
A Florida condominium building collapsed on June 24, 2021, one day after John McAfee died by suicide. Shortly after, many social media users began stating that the two events were related. The viral claim usually states that McAfee owned property in the Surfside building and was storing 31TB of incriminating data on hard drives there. The belief insinuates that the property was intentionally demolished to prevent the release of this information.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found no evidence that McAfee or anyone related to him owned property in the Champlain Towers prior to the collapse. A property search of the Champlain Towers address, 8777 Collins Avenue, does not list McAfee as an owner of any of the building’s available units.
The tweet usually shared along with this claim also seems to be fabricated. Using the All My Tweets tool, we found that McAfee only tweeted twice on June 8, and neither of them mention 31TB of data or the Florida property. In June 2019, McAfee did tweet that he had “31 + terabytes of incriminating data” but never mentions where it is stored.
Currently, there are not any conclusive answers as to why the Champlain Towers collapsed but there are a number of theories. According to engineering experts, the collapse was likely the result of weakening beams and long-term saltwater damage. There is no evidence that the building was intentionally demolished.
