When will the madness for views and likes come to an end?
Officials from the Justice Department announced that a YouTuber, aged 29, would plead guilty to a federal charge for deliberately crashing a plane and destroying its wreckage to increase his views.
A YouTuber named Trevor Daniel Jacob planned and crashed a plane on purpose to make a video advertisement for a wallet. Afterwards, he got rid of the wreckage to prevent investigators from examining the site. The US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California made this announcement.
The release further explained that Jacob, who is a skydiver and pilot, intended to plead guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the aim of hindering a federal investigation.
The “incident” happened on November 24, 2021 when Jacob flew a plane from Lompoc City Airport in Santa Barbara County.
However, instead of landing the plane, he wanted to jump out of the aircraft mid-flight and record himself parachuting to the ground while capturing the plane’s descent and crash. To do this, he had several cameras placed in the plane, as well as a video camera, selfie stick, and a parachute. Jacob has admitted to some wrongdoing.
The release further stated that approximately 35 minutes after taking off, while flying over the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Maria, Jacob ejected from the plane and filmed himself parachuting to the ground, which was clearly fake.
In addition, after recording the plane crash, Jacob hiked to the wreckage, took video data of the crash and got rid of the wreckage to hinder the investigation. He reported the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board but lied about the crash site’s location. Later, he flew to the site with a friend, removed the wreckage, and destroyed it.
A month after the crash, he uploaded a video titled “I Crashed My Airplane,” which aroused suspicion among some viewers, who pointed out that Jacob was already wearing a parachute and made no attempt to land the plane safely.
He admitted in his plea agreement that he planned to earn money through the video of the plane crash and also confessed to lying to federal investigators after submitting an aircraft accident incident report.
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