McAfee has shown time and again that he wasn't a reliable or rational person.

Paying taxes is even less painful and he didn’t do that.

He had enough charges lined up (up to 5 years for every count, IIRC) that he would likely be imprisoned for life. Goes without saying but he was also an incredibly paranoid person.

Yeah, but federal sentencing guidelines are complicated and it's very unlikely he'd serve anything like the possible maximum sentence. Trial probably would have dragged on for a few years and he'd eventually plead to something and serve a couple of years in a minimum security prison.

That said, he was 75, so I guess even a few years could potentially be a life sentence.

I doubt it. charges tend to run concurrently. If he cooperated and paid what he could, likely he would serve no time.

> He had enough charges lined up (up to 5 years for every count, IIRC) that he would likely be imprisoned for life

Usually, without aggravating circumstances, federal sentences would run concurrently, though thr multiplicity might push them up within the range permitted. So, lots of nonviolent up to 5 years per count crimes with no particular extreme factors likely adds up to...about 5 years.

Which at his age might still be a sizable fraction of his life, and he wouldn't be the first person to act based on an unrealistic estimate based on what is theoretically possible rather than likely.

He was 75.8 years old at the time of his death and the average life expectancy for a male in the United States is 76.3.

That's not really how that works. The life expectancy of an American male who already attained aged 75 is 11 more years.