Millions of people have since watched Jacob’s footage, titled “I crashed my airplane.” In a plea deal filed this week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, he admitted he planned the whole thing.
On Thursday, the Justice Department announced that Jacob, 29, would plead guilty to concealing evidence and obstructing a federal investigation by deliberately crashing the plane and hiding the wreckage, as part of a ploy to attract YouTube views. The felony count carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
“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,” his attorney, Keri Curtis Axel, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Authorities say Jacob’s video of the crash, which has more than 3 million views on his channel, was part of a promotion for a wallet company sponsoring him. In an older version of the video no longer on his channel, he shows off a Ridge wallet before boarding the plane at Lompoc City Airport, in Santa Barbara County. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the Los Angeles Times reported that a promotional link for Jacob was still active on the company’s website Thursday.
Two days after the crash, he notified the National Transportation Safety Board. The agency launched an investigation and told Jacob that he was responsible for preserving the wreckage for examination.
But, the Justice Department said in its release, Jacob had actually hiked to the location of the wreck after crashing the plane and recovered the camera video.
He lied to investigators in the following weeks, the Justice Department said, claiming that he did not know the location of the wreckage. In fact, he and a friend had lifted the remains of the plane away in a helicopter, towed them back to the airport in Jacob’s pickup truck, then cut them up and disposed of them in trash bins.
The Federal Aviation Administration launched its own investigation into the crash and eventually revoked Jacob’s pilot license. The FAA cited several pieces of evidence that Jacob intentionally crashed his plane, The Post reported last year, including his failure to contact air traffic control, restart the engine or attempt to land the plane “even though there were multiple areas within gliding range in which you could have made a safe landing.”
Jacob is a former Olympic snowboarder who placed ninth in the men’s snowboard cross competition at the 2014 Winter Games and has shared videos of his skydiving and snowboarding stunts on YouTube, where he has 138,000 subscribers.
“Thank you God, thank you universe, thank you higher power for watching over me,” Jacob says at one point in the crash video, which also documents his trek through the wilderness and eventual rescue.
But YouTube commenters almost immediately voiced their suspicion. A number of them pointed out that Jacob was already wearing a parachute and took his camera and selfie stick with him when he ejected the plane. Pilots and aviation enthusiasts were also incredulous, posting dozens of videos analyzing Jacob’s crash.
Jacob is expected to make a court appearance in the coming weeks.