A pilot named Trevor Jacob has been accused of causing a plane crash to increase YouTube views in the United States. The pilot, a YouTuber, has been charged with jumping out of the sky and intentionally crashing the plane. He can be sentenced to 20 years in this incident.
International media Al Jazeera reported this information in a report on Friday (May 12).
A video titled ‘I Crashed My Plane’ shows Trevor Jacob flying the plane over Southern California in November 2021, the report said. It is believed that he had engine trouble at that time.
About three lakh people have seen the dramatic video. The video shows 29-year-old Jacob getting out of the single-engine plane to jump. And at that time he had a selfie stick in his hand.
He is seen slowly parachuting down into the dense vegetation of the Los Padres National Forest. Cameras were installed almost everywhere in the plane. It can be seen that it is slowly losing control towards the National Forest and at one point it crashed.
Weeks after the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigative teams began investigating the crash. Then they also instructed Jacob to preserve the ruins.
Jacob later took a plea deal in a Los Angeles court. According to the contract, two weeks after the dramatic accident, he and a friend rescued the wreckage from the forest in a helicopter. Before that he recovered the data from the onboard camera. Over the next few days, he cut the plane into small pieces and dumped the wreckage in a dustbin at the local Lompoc City Airport area.
The FAA revoked Jacob’s pilot’s license in April 2022. Jacobs admits that he wanted to thwart federal authorities by destroying evidence of the ruins and made the video to earn money through a sponsorship with a wallet company.
Jacobs agreed to plead guilty to obstructing a federal investigation and destroying evidence. He can be jailed for a maximum of 20 years for such a crime.