Trevor Jacob, the YouTuber who bailed out of his own plane and later admitted that he did it for the views, is off to jail for six months over the November 2021 stunt. Jacobs earlier plead guilty to obstructing a federal investigation, having recovered and destroyed the wreckage himself to make sure the NTSB couldn't get its hands on it.
In the weeks following the plane crash, Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage's location. In fact, on December 10, 2021, Jacob and a friend flew by helicopter to the wreckage site. There, Jacob used straps to secure the wreckage, which the helicopter lifted and carried to Rancho Sisquoc in Santa Barbara County, where it was loaded onto a trailer attached to Jacob's pickup truck.
Jacob drove the wreckage to Lompoc City Airport and unloaded it in a hangar. He then cut up and destroyed the airplane wreckage and, over the course of a few days, deposited the detached parts of the wrecked airplane into trash bins at the airport and elsewhere, which was done with the intent to obstruct federal authorities from investigating the November 24 plane crash.
On December 23, 2021, Jacob uploaded a YouTube video titled, "I Crashed My Airplane," that contained a promotion of the wallet and depicted him parachuting from the plane and the aircraft's subsequent crash. Jacob intended to make money through the video.
Amazingly hare-brained crime here. There should be an award for it. I suppose the sentence is the reward, but the conviction doesn't indicate the supreme onlineness at hand. Call your Senator and demand Congress legislate a modest but indicative sentencing enhancement for Amazingly Hare-Brained and an aggravating factor for Supremely Online.
