With multiple cameras and slick editing, Trevor Jacob documented the dramatic moments when his small plane crashed into a Santa Barbara County hillside as he parachuted to safety.
The 2021 video titled, “I Crashed My Airplane,” quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.
It was all staged.
On Wednesday, Jacob, 29, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing a federal investigation after admitting to intentionally crashing the plane to get views on his YouTube channel, the United States Department of Justice announced. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
According to the plea agreement, Jacob had secured a sponsorship from a company that sold various products, including a wallet, which he intended to promote in a YouTube video.
On Nov. 24, prosecutors say Jacob took off from the Lompoc City Airport in his single-engine Taylorcraft BL-65 on a solo flight purportedly destined for Mammoth Lakes.
About 30 minutes later, while flying above the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Maria, the YouTube video shows Jacob saying the plane’s lone engine had failed.
“Holy ****! I’m over the mountains and I have an engine out,” he says.
Jacob jumped from the plane and recorded himself parachuting to the ground. Cameras mounted inside and outside of the aircraft showed it descending over the hills and eventually crashing into dry brush.
“Thank you, God. Thank you, universe. Thank you, higher power, for watching over me,” he says after hiking to the wreckage.
He then hiked out of the forest and flagged down a driver.
Prosecutors say Jacob waited two days to report the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board which told him to preserve the wreckage. He stalled the investigation by telling NTSB officials that he didn’t know where the plane went down, according to the DOJ.
More than two weeks after the crash on Dec. 10, he and a friend flew a helicopter to the crash site and airlifted the wreckage 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,” prosecutors said. “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.”
Prosecutors also say Jacob lied to federal investigators and an FAA safety inspector when he told them the plane had lost power and he could not identify a safe place to land.
The FAA revoked his pilot’s license in April 2022.
As of Thursday, “I Crashed My Airplane” was still posted on Jacob’s YouTube channel and had amassed nearly 3 million views.