YouTuber faces 20 years in prison for crashing plane to gain views

Trevor Jacob on the plane before it crashed

INDEPENDENT SCREENSHOT

The Independent newspaper reported on May 12 that American citizen Trevor Jacob faces up to 20 years in prison for intentionally crashing a plane to gain views on the video-sharing platform YouTube and then obstructing the investigation.

The incident occurred on November 24, 2021, when the young man escaped from a Taylorcraft BL-65 single-engine plane. The plane crashed into a mountainside in the Los Padres National Forest (California, USA), while he fell by parachute with about 3 cameras recording the incident.

On May 11, the US Department of Justice announced that Jacob (29 years old) had reached a plea agreement for destroying and concealing the crashed plane, in order to obstruct the investigation. Jacob is a YouTuber (who shares videos on YouTube), pilot and former Olympic snowboarder.

The young man hoped to gain views with the plane crash video. "I was flying over the mountains and the engine failed," he said in the video, before diving out of the plane. Jacob also took the opportunity to promote a wallet in the video.

Despite the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announcing an investigation and offering to cooperate, Jacob then hired vehicles to take the wreckage to Lompoc Airport (California) and cut it into pieces for delivery to scrap yards.

According to the Justice Department, Jacob is accused of lying to authorities to "conceal his intentional departure from a plane in flight in order to make a video for fame and money." The pilot lost his pilot's license in April 2022 and faces a possible permanent ban from flying. Jacob is expected to be sentenced in the coming months.

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