Plane Crashing Youtuber Meets the Law

An influencer who staged a California plane crash to make a YouTube video of himself parachuting to safety has agreed to plead guilty to obstructing the investigation by destroying the wreckage, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday. The plea agreement signed by Trevor Daniel Jacob, 29, of Lompoc, California, and his attorney was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The U.S. attorney's office said in a statement that Jacob is expected to make a court appearance in coming weeks. Jacob, an experienced pilot and skydiver, agreed to plead guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The video titled "I Crashed My Airplane" appeared in December 2021 and purported to show Jacob's small plane have engine failure over the mountainous Los Padres National Forest. Already wearing a parachute, he jumped out with a selfie stick camera in hand. His jump and the aircraft's plunge were recorded by cameras mounted on the plane's wing and tail and by the camera he carried. After landing, he hiked to the crash site and recovered video from the onboard cameras, the government said. The video currently has 3.3 million views.

It starts with a view of Jacob giddily flying over Los Padres National Forest in California. About a minute and a half into the video, the plane's propeller slows to a stop, and Jacob starts cursing. By the two-minute mark, he jumps out of the plane. Footage from cameras mounted on the plane shows the crash, and Jacob uses a selfie stick to film himself parachuting into a dry brush area, where he incurs minor injuries and is exposed to poison oak. "I'm just kind of taking in what happened," Jacob said in the video, which then shows him hiking to the crash site to retrieve his cameras before spending what appears to be a harrowing day attempting to find his way out of the wilderness. "I'm scared," Jacob told his approximately 100,000 subscribers when the video was posted. "I'm in trouble." However, in his plea agreement, Jacob admitted that he had "planned to eject from his aircraft during the flight and video himself parachuting to the ground and his airplane as it descended and crashed," the DOJ reported.

According to the plea agreement, Jacob had a sponsorship deal to promote a company's product in a video he would post, and he never intended to complete the November 24, 2021, flight. Jacob is scheduled to appear in court in the coming weeks, the DOJ reported. A DOJ public information officer, Ciaran McEvoy, told Ars that Jacob has not yet pleaded guilty. After an initial court appearance-essentially a bond hearing-a change of plea hearing will be scheduled. If Jacob pleads guilty at that hearing, a federal judge will schedule a sentencing hearing several months later. From there, Jacob would meet with the US Probation Office, which will draft a confidential pre-sentencing report recommending the sentence that the office thinks he deserves. Jacob and the prosecutors can either agree or disagree with that sentencing report, and then, ultimately, a judge will determine what sentence is imposed. Jacob's lawyer, Keri Curtis Axel, told the press, "Trevor is taking full responsibility for his mistake in judgment; he hopes to move past it and to use his status as a world-class action sports athlete, entrepreneur, and influencer to be a source for good in society."

The real trouble for Jacob apparently started on November 26, 2021, when he reported the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which informed him that "he was responsible for preserving the wreckage so the agency could examine it," the DOJ reported. Jacob told an NTSB investigator that he would "determine the crash location" and provide coordinates. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched its own investigation three days later, and according to the plea agreement, over the next few weeks, Jacob started lying to federal investigators rather than cooperating with the investigation. First, he said he couldn't determine the crash location, but in reality, he admitted in the plea agreement to tapping a friend with a helicopter to help him retrieve the wreckage. Upon that retrieval, Jacob then admitted to driving the wreckage to Lompoc City Airport, where he detached parts and tossed them out, dispersing the evidence in airport and other trash receptacles. The plea agreement said this "was done with the intent to obstruct federal authorities from investigating the November 24 plane crash."

The lies didn't stop there, the plea agreement said. When federal investigators asked Jacob how the crash happened, Jacob admitted in the plea agreement to falsely indicating that the plane had lost power and an engine quit after takeoff. He initially claimed that "because he could not identify any safe landing options, he had parachuted out of the plane," but the DOJ reported that in the plea agreement, he admitted that he staged it all and "intended to make money through the video."

In April 2022, the FAA revoked Jacob's pilot license, noting that, among other concerns, Jacob made no attempt to contact Air Traffic Control, restart the engine, or look for areas to safely land the plane, "even though there were multiple areas within gliding range" where he could have landed the plane. The FAA determined that Jacob violated federal aviation regulations by operating an aircraft in such a "careless or reckless" manner.