Trevor Daniel Jacob, 30, was sentenced to six months prison for deliberately crashing his plane for views on YouTube. The video was posted by Jacob in December 2021, implying it was an accident.
In the video, he had ejected from the plane, holding selfie stick in the hand and parachuted down to land.
The video had hit millions of views.
During the investigations, he had denied crashing his plane deliberately.
YouTuber Trevor Jacob was sentenced to 6 months in prison for this pic.twitter.com/M4kq3JvUEg
— geo ppls (@geoppls) December 4, 2023
In the plea agreement, Jacob said he filmed the video as part of a product sponsorship deal.
The former Olympic snowboarder and YouTuber pleaded guilty earlier this year to concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation.
According to the federal prosecutors, he "most likely committed this offence to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain," reported BBC.
They also added that this "daredevil" conduct cannot be tolerated, they added.
In a statement, Jacob described the sentence as the “right decision”.
In November 2021, Jacob left from Santa Barbara, California, airport on a solo flight with cameras mounted on his plane.
He "did not intend to reach his destination, but instead 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 US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said.
The plane crashed into Los Padres National Forest 35 minutes after take off. He hiked to the site and recovered the footage.
He then uploaded the video entitled "I crashed my airplane" to YouTube on December 23, which contained a promotion for a wallet company, prosecutors said.
