YouTuber Gets Six Months in Jail For Deliberately Crashing His Plane
A YouTuber has been sent to prison for six months after he purposefully crashed his airplane and then hid the wreckage.
Former pro-snowboarder Trevor Jacob, 30, pled guilty in June to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation.
The incident took place in November 2021 and was uploaded to his YouTube channel in a video called I Crashed My Airplane. On Wednesday, Judge John F. Walter presiding over a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ordered that Jacob surrender himself to authorities by January 29.
Jacob calls the sentence the “right decision” adding that “this experience has been so humbling,” as per a statement from his lawyers.
During the investigation, prosecutors said that Jacob “most likely committed this offense to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain” and stressed that “this type of ‘daredevil’ conduct cannot be tolerated.”
Trevor Jacob and His Intentional Plane Crash?
After Jacob posted the video on November 24, 2021, viewers were immediately suspicious because he was unusually wearing a parachute and took no action to restart the plane’s engine or attempt to glide the aircraft safely to the ground; there was also multiple cameras attached to the plane.
He is an experienced pilot and skydiver, but the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) revoked his license in April 2022 after it deemed that the YouTuber crashed his plane on purpose.
The FAA ordered Jacob to preserve the wreckage: He told officials he did not know where the plane had crashed but two weeks after the incident he and a friend winched the wreckage out of Los Padres National Forest.
In the following days, Jacob cut the aircraft into small pieces and dumped them into trash bins in and around Lompoc City Airport.
Yesterday, Jacob posted a new video yesterday entitled: I Got My Pilots License Back! But Going To Prison… in which he posted footage of himself flying an aircraft with his girlfriend who says: “I feel so safe flying with you, I really do, I feel stupid comfortable.”
“I am excited to continue my positive growth as a person through my six-month term in prison,” says Jacob. “This was a massive learning experience.”
