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YouTuber Who Deliberately Crashed Airplane For Views Admits To Obstructing Federal Investigation (justice.gov) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the going-to-great-lengths dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: YouTuber Trevor Jacob has pled guilty to felony federal obstruction of an investigation for removing and destroying wreckage of his airplane that he intentionally crashed in November 2021 for online YouTube views. Maximum sentence is 20 years.

On November 24, 2021 Jacob was flying solo from Lompoc City Airport to Mammoth Lakes, California. He reported to the FAA that he had engine trouble and had to abandon the plane using a parachute. After the FAA launched an active investigation, Jacob lied about not knowing the location of wreckage for the next several weeks despite his video footage that he found the wreckage shortly after landing on the ground. On December 10, 2021 Jacob and a friend lifted the wreckage away from the national forest crash site using a helicopter. Jacob transported the wreckage back to Lompoc City Airport with a truck. He then cut up and disposed of the wreckage over then next several days using the airport's trash bins.

On December 23,2021 Jacob posted a YouTube video titled, "I Crashed My Airplane" which showed his account of engine trouble and the crash. Keen viewers were immediately skeptical of Jacob's account of a flight "emergency" noting he had multiple cameras recording the event including a selfie stick and that Jacob was wearing a parachute before the engine trouble occurred. Pilots commented how Jacob failed to follow basic procedures like attempting to restart the plane or contacting air traffic control with a mayday before ditching the plane. Largely based on the his YouTube video, the FAA revoked his pilot's license in April 2022.
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YouTuber Who Deliberately Crashed Airplane For Views Admits To Obstructing Federal Investigation More

YouTuber Who Deliberately Crashed Airplane For Views Admits To Obstructing Federal Investigation

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  • Imbalance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Barny ( 103770 ) on Friday May 12, 2023 @05:12AM (#63515911) Journal

    But insider trading for over $1.5m is just 2 years?

    • Re:Imbalance (Score:4, Informative)

      by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Friday May 12, 2023 @05:23AM (#63515941) Homepage

      Inside trading can also get up 20 years [kretzerfirm.com] of jail time. The 2 years you mention is actual sentence, which is often much less than the maximum that can be imposed.

    • If you commit insider trading you face 20 years. If you obstruct a federal investigation into it you face an additional 20. There is no Imbalance here.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Hey, crash a bank for a few ten billions in damage and you do not get punished at all!

    • Re:Imbalance (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday May 12, 2023 @07:07AM (#63516119)

      Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street) committed massive fraud on the order of hundreds of millions. He got 2-3 years in rich person jail. His cell mate was Tommy Chong who received a sentence of 9 months for selling bongs. Today there’s a bong store at the fucking mall.

    • But insider trading for over $1.5m is just 2 years?

      Yes, but if you send an email during insider trading, wire fraud will allow the government to prosecute you for infinite jail time.

    • Huge difference. What this asshat did could have sparked a massive wildfire at minimum, but with a plane out of control, a gust of wind and anything else happening in the plane, it could have altered course, and it could have cost people their life. Let alone the environmental impact of the crap the plane would have leaked out into the area....

  • Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes

  • Wow. (Score:2)

    by mcsynk ( 896173 )

    Cool video - he just got one more view. Absolutely schocking inexcusable behaviour nevertheless.

  • These are weird times indeed

    • These are weird times indeed

      A social media platform that charges "customers" nothing to be bought and sold as the actual Product, perpetuates and promotes mass narcissism for the sake of selling ads.

      Just curious, who exactly is the "fucking idiot" again in all this? The narcissist, or the society that accepts people being turned into The Product? We're one global food shortage away from Soylent Green with this mentality. Unreal.

  • Gotta give props to the guy (Score:5, Funny)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday May 12, 2023 @05:40AM (#63515983)

    Rarely does someone go to those lengths to hide something they recorded themselves doing and shared on Youtube.

  • He got the views, but does not seem like his cost/benefit analysis will pan out at all.

    • Especially since the video was the main evidence that is being used against him. Also this only settles the FAA charges. If the feds are petty, he can face charges from the National Park system for dangerously and intentionally crashing the plane and removing something from a national park without permission.

    • He got the views, but does not seem like his cost/benefit analysis will pan out at all.

      He'll get a lot more views for his upcoming "taking it in the butt in prison" video - although that may need to go on a different site.

  • All that work for just 3 million views (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sonoronos ( 610381 ) on Friday May 12, 2023 @05:48AM (#63516009)

    Honestly, it puts the top Youtube creators into perspective. They can literally get triple those numbers in a hundredth of the time by doing nothing but playing video games and yelling into a microphone.

    Other people have to resort to buying planes, flying them, ditching them, jumping out them, then recovering them with a helicopter, then chopping them up in secret, then going to jail.

    Maybe, at some point, you have to make an honest evaluation about whether or not the effort is worth the views.

    • Use classical music in your video and you are punished because someone claims copyright. Do dangerous things, pollute the environment, break the law more than once, and the video stays up. For YouTube, the views are clearly worth it, no matter the consequences.
      • That's just a symptom of tech being tech - it is too easy to automate the easy punishments.

        It's like on Twitter, you can get banned for calling someone a cunt, but you can espouse Nazi views day in day out with no repercussions. Because it's easy to do text search.

      • Use classical music in your video and you are punished because someone claims copyright.

        Hiring your own orchestra is expensive. Want to use someone else's performance for free? Too bad.

        • I think the point was the complexity of using music even classical music. Generally most classical music being hundreds of years old have no copyright on the music; however, the copyright might exist on a performance of that piece. For example the New York Philharmonic's holiday 2022 rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is probably copyrighted. That being said there can be a lot of false claims as it is very difficult to identify which specific performance the piece is. Also some entity claiming they own t
        • There are many performances published under Creative Commons. Doesn't prevent copyrights holders from thinking every performance is theirs, even if they didn't produce it.
        • Obvious liar for youtube is obvious liar

          You can perform it yourself. Its still getting copyright struck. You know that. You are a liar.

          • I would file a DMCA counter notice and the video goes right back. That would be the easiest thing I've done all day. Nobody would take it further than that because it's a waste of time.

      • Some state outlawed famous criminals from profiting from books they wrote about their crime. It got tossed out because cutting the profit motive impacts the first amendment.

        Now filming yourself committing a crime, which you commit for that reason, I dunno if the film's profits can be taken as il gotten gains.

    • To be fair, it's far easier to ignore the bozo who yells at a computer game than to do so with someone dropping a plane on you.

    • You probably have to spend a few years screaming into the microphone over a game to get up to 3 million.

      If you pull a stunt like this, you have a very good chance of getting those views instantly.

      Then you go to jail.

  • I can't help but notice that most articles fail to name them.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      How much are they paying you? And if they aren't, why are you giving them free advertising when they're clearly willing to pay for it?

      • Has there been new research into whether "No such thing as bad publicity" is true or not?

        • On the one hand, it's newsworthy that a company sponsored this. On the other, naming the specific one made me look them up. Next time I see them online, I may forget why I've heard of them before but I will remember that I've heard of them before - which does gain them credibility.

    • Promo code Melon!

    • I can't help but notice that most articles fail to name them.

      If Ridge Wallet had indeed paid this Youtuber to crash this plane, then why haven't the Feds indicted the Ridge Wallet folks for inciting a Federal crime?

  • How much did he make on youtube, versus how much will he pay in fines and lawyers? How profitable is crashing your plane and covering it up for views?

    Is it like a telecom company that illegally steals $200M from it's customers in bullshit fees, and then gets fined $10M from the government?

    • Also obtaining a pilot's license is thousands of dollars. While it is possible he can reinstate his license at a later time, there is the possibility he will not get it back ever. The next consequence that could be costly is the felony conviction. Jacob may not go to jail for a lengthy amount of time but a felony conviction closes a lot of doors.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        His sponsorship deal has to be in the millions. Might still be worth it financially speaking, even after lawyer's fees. Would I spend a year or two in jail in exchange for say $2 million? No. But I'm sure there's people who would.

  • So the report is that he AND an unnamed buddy with a helicopter removed the evidence from the crash site. What about the accomplice, is he being charged? Or, did he provide the prosecution with what they need4ed to nail this guy?
  • He is going to also get a huge clean up bill for the intentional airplane crash. A fool and his money soon part. Why didn't he just use AI?

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