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YouTuber Admits Crashing Plane for Views

Trevor Jacob now faces up to 20 years in prison.

A YouTuber on Thursday admitted that he intentionally crashed a plane in a bid to bring viewers to his channel. Trevor Jacob, 29, pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal investigation in relation to the incident in 2021 in which his single-engine aircraft crashed in Los Padres national forest in California. A video titled “I Crashed My Plane” uploaded to his channel shows Jacobs jumping out of the cockpit with a parachute as the plane plummets to the ground. He initially told authorities that the aircraft lost power and that he didn’t know where the wreck was, but investigators later found that he hadn’t attempted to call air traffic control, locate a safe landing zone, or restart the engine. Despite telling the National Transportation Safety Board he didn’t know where the wreckage was, he and a friend flew to the crash site weeks after the flight and towed the plane to a hangar where he spent days destroying sections of the aircraft. In a plea agreement, Jacob admitted that he did this to mislead investigators and acknowledged that he never intended to complete the flight. The FAA revoked his pilot license in 2022. He now faces up to 20 years in federal prison.