Sit back and listen to a story about Trevor Jacob, an Olympian and member of Nitro Circus, and how he crashed his plane for the Youtube likes! This is eCrimeBytes.com Season 2 Ep 4-1: YouTuber Olympian Trevor Jacob Crashes His Plane For The Likes – Act 1: Nice Day For A Flight.
Sources:
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:40:01
Keith
Hey, welcome to eCrimeBytes Season two Episode four, A YouTuber crashes his plane for the likes. Now you’re going, What is this about? Well, hold the fuck on, because this is going to be one hell of an episode that does have electronic evidence in it. And it’s about the internet because we’re talking about YouTube. But just hold on because I don’t even know how to describe this other than just get in, get into this case.
00:00:40:01 – 00:01:05:28
Keith
But I will first pop up the thumbnail that I put together for this gentleman. His name is Trevor Jacob, and he’s a social media person, so he has a lot on his Instagram. This is an Instagram picture of him skydiving naked. And I was like, How can I make Seth so unbelievably uncomfortable by looking at our YouTube thumbnail?
00:01:06:00 – 00:01:26:22
Keith
And I said, Hey, this guy’s junk I guess he’s kind of in the middle of this, but I’m just going to put his eyes just above the title of this episode. So he’s just staring at me real creepy-like, and if you’re watching this video, you actually see the thumbnail that I’m talking about. This is a picture that he had on his Instagram of him skydiving.
00:01:26:22 – 00:01:32:28
Keith
And if you go, Whoa, that’s kind of crazy. Trust me, this this case is like this from beginning to end.
00:01:32:28 – 00:01:46:08
Keith
All right, So let’s get Seth and I back up here on your screen and let me jump into the case details. And we’re just going to run through the bullets that we usually run through for every case. So you know what’s going to be coming at you.
00:01:46:11 – 00:02:04:27
Keith
First of all, technology relatively light here. We have airplanes. I consider a technology because full disclosure, I have my private pilot’s certificate as well. And I’m going to be able to talk you through some maps and things that you aren’t going to see in the news that I actually put together.
00:02:04:27 – 00:02:11:10
Keith
And airplanes have things like GPS and well, a lot of airplanes have things like GPS in them.
00:02:11:10 – 00:02:32:21
Keith
And just important evidence later on of a crash that you would want to retrieve. There’s going to be video and there’s going to be video on things like mobile phones and there’s going to be video on things like GoPros, like the sport cameras that aren’t necessarily a phone, but they’re kind of like, you know, people will strap them to helmets.
00:02:32:24 – 00:02:58:12
Keith
You’ll see them strapped to the outside of a plane here. That’s electronic evidence in this case and YouTube. So I’m pretty sure most of our listeners are familiar with YouTube, especially if you’re watching us on YouTube. But the reason why this crime happened was for likes on YouTube. It was that simple. That simple. So I’m lumping it in with technology.
00:02:58:12 – 00:03:00:09
Keith
So tell us about the crime here, Seth.
00:03:00:12 – 00:03:28:05
Seth
So I guess it’s really only one crime, although I think there was probably a litany of crimes relating to what he did, but they the crime that he, I think ultimately was held responsible for was the altered or destroyed tangible object associated with impeding the investigation of, you know, the NTSB and the FAA, who are the federal investigators responsible for any kind of, I guess, flight aviation or transportation generally.
00:03:28:08 – 00:03:34:04
Seth
And this comes with a 20 year maximum sentence. So we’ll come back to that issue.
00:03:34:07 – 00:03:42:21
Keith
Yeah, I agree. There are so, so many laws he broke outside this and we will point them out and address them as we go along the way.
00:03:42:21 – 00:03:50:17
Keith
The one that he plead to is the one that Seth just read to you. So now the criminal his name is Trevor Daniel
00:03:50:24 – 00:04:13:02
Keith
Jacob. He’s done a lot of stuff in his life. He’s a former Olympian. And we’re going to talk about what he did. He’s a nitro circus performer and probably half our crowd goes, hey, I know who Nitro Circus is. And the other half goes, Who the hell’s that? We’re going to explain it here in a few minutes. And he’s just an all around, quote unquote, extreme sports athlete.
00:04:13:02 – 00:04:37:14
Seth
Okay. So who are the victims here? I don’t really know. I mean, I, you know, like any kind of case where you have kind of somebody who is what is the technical term shitbag, somebody who does something so incredibly stupid. You can argue that the taxpayers are ultimately the victims because they have to foot the bill for whatever litigation or criminal proceedings follow this user.
00:04:37:14 – 00:04:42:16
Seth
Nobody was hurt on this one, so no spoiler there right? A plane was crashed. Nobody died in it.
00:04:42:16 – 00:04:49:05
Seth
I think it was a perfectly good waste of a perfectly good airplane. That’s that’s the that’s one victim, I would argue.
00:04:49:05 – 00:05:01:13
Seth
And then you know what I mean. I think the victim is society. And I mean that not not tongue in cheek, because if we’re at a place now where somebody has to do something this stupid in order to make a living, right.
00:05:01:13 – 00:05:16:26
Seth
I mean, because ultimately, you know, how do people on social media or social media influencers make money? They get people looking at their sites or their their Instagram so they can get advertising. Right. And that’s really what we’re coming down to, the fact that that’s where we are as a society. I find to be a little disheartening, right?
00:05:16:27 – 00:05:32:13
Seth
I have no qualms with people making money or making their living however they want to, especially if nobody gets hurt. However, if you’re doing things that are so outlandish, that are potentially dangerous, you know, in order just to get likes, in order to make a living, it’s not great.
00:05:32:13 – 00:05:54:12
Keith
Yeah. And so why did I choose this choose this case? For several reasons. There’s Nitro Circus, there’s airplane crashes, there’s electronics, YouTube. And later on, you’re going to find there’s a cover up involved. And I say, why not this case? So let me walk you through our acts for this week in this episode.
00:05:54:12 – 00:06:06:20
Keith
So the acts we’re going to bring you this week, act number one, which is the one you’re watching this is coming up Monday. This is a nice day for a flight because that’s some of the first words he says in the first video that we’re going to walk you through.
00:06:06:22 – 00:06:12:02
Keith
And I didn’t even mention it, but we have the video of this crash. This is one of the very first
00:06:12:02 – 00:06:25:18
Keith
cases that we’ve brought to you where we can actually show you video of the crime as the crime happened, which is another reason why I picked this. Like I said, there are so many reasons. I’ve been sitting on this case for a while now.
00:06:25:18 – 00:06:55:27
Keith
I was so excited to bring you guys this one. So just buckle up. So that’s Act One. Act two is coming out on Tuesday, which is engines out and you’ll find out why. Act three on Wednesday is going to be the investigations. That’s the FAA and the NTSB that Seth just talked about earlier. Act four is going to be the cover up, and that’s going to be what this gentleman did to try to make the investigations go away.
00:06:55:29 – 00:07:07:29
Keith
And that’ll be our concluding act. So with that, I’m going to go ahead and just get right into our story for Act one. Nice day for a flight. Where you going to say something, Seth?
00:07:08:02 – 00:07:15:18
Seth
Just a point of correction, please have respect for fucking light it fucking light it because we had video of that crime too.
00:07:15:20 – 00:07:20:00
Keith
I Yes, Yes, we did. I totally forgot about that. Okay.
00:07:20:00 – 00:07:26:25
Seth
And that’s such a key element of our whole show is fucking light it. So just, just put it out there, all right?
00:07:26:25 – 00:07:29:12
Keith
Yeah, well, this will be the first one for season two. How are that?
00:07:29:12 – 00:07:31:20
Seth
Yes. All right, all right.
00:07:31:23 – 00:07:34:13
Keith
All right. So to get into this nice day for a flight,
00:07:35:04 – 00:07:38:16
Keith
All right, so this is the picture that I took
00:07:38:16 – 00:07:51:05
Keith
our thumbnail of. This is the original. This is the one that came off of Instagram. So this is the gentleman that we’re going to be talking about throughout this episode. So already ready this should set the bar of your expectations and for you audio listening as you go on…
00:07:51:05 – 00:08:12:23
Keith
What is he looking at? Well, it’s a gentleman that’s, I’d say naked. I don’t see anything covering anything anywhere other than just the equipment you would wear to jump out of an airplane. And there is obviously a deployed parachute above him. You don’t see the parachute. You see the lines going up and you see like a backpack on him.
00:08:12:23 – 00:08:34:02
Keith
And there’s like a seat, I guess, that he’s sitting in that covers his important parts. And there’s like this that a fanny pack ish looking thing on the front that covers is important parts. And he’s wearing sandals and he’s looks like maybe has a selfie stick while he’s doing this. And so this isn’t the actual jump that we’re going to show you.
00:08:34:02 – 00:08:40:26
Keith
This is just a picture of another jump that he made because this is the type of thing that he does all the time.
00:08:40:26 – 00:08:42:25
Keith
I’ll bring Seth and I back up
00:08:42:25 – 00:09:04:08
Keith
to give you a little background on who Trevor Jacob is. He’s a former snowboarding Olympian. And this is circa 2014. He was in the Olympic Winter Games and there was a ninth place in the men’s snowboard cross tournament.
00:09:04:08 – 00:09:05:13
Keith
I don’t know what do you call it? Yeah, they.
00:09:05:13 – 00:09:20:17
Seth
Usually do like half pipe type stuff. You know, if you watch the Olympics or other kinds of snowboarding thing. My kids are snowboarders. I’m a skier. So yeah, there’s a big half pipe and they, you know, come in and they do jumps and flips and then it’s big waves off on the level of difficulty in their execution.
00:09:20:20 – 00:09:24:16
Keith
Yeah. So run, I guess I’ve heard them say a run before.
00:09:24:16 – 00:09:26:05
Seth
Okay.
00:09:26:07 – 00:09:57:26
Keith
So he’s also a member of Nitro Circus and Nitro Circus, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s kind of like a reality stunt show. And I think it’s MTV or VH one or something along those lines where the cast will do extreme sports type of things like jump out of airplanes or, you know, flip quads or jump out of airplanes with quads or you name it.
00:09:57:29 – 00:10:21:04
Keith
And it’s the person that you would know the most from it is Travis Pastrana from Annapolis, Maryland. And we talked about Annapolis in one of our cases in season one. And that’s where I live. He’s known for jumping. Well, he lives here and he’s known also for Jumping Ego Alley, which is this like little waterway where people bring their big boats in to show them off.
00:10:21:04 – 00:10:35:21
Keith
And it’s a pretty interesting thing that he did. And if you’re interested in that, I’ll actually put a link in our sources section and you can go watch the video. It’s pretty long. I’m not going to put it on here, but it’s it’s pretty cool. And it shows you Annapolis and then it goes out, shows you more of Maryland.
00:10:35:24 – 00:11:09:26
Keith
So, Travis, I would say people kind of consider him a local hero. Okay. So when he says something, people will at least in this area, will listen to him. So we get back to the individual we’re talking about, which is Trevor Jacob. So what, Trevor Jacob, him being in Nitro Circus brings him into contact with Travis Pastrana and Trevor Jacob always had Travis Pastrana as one of his gurus slash mentors.
00:11:09:26 – 00:11:17:03
Keith
It’s the guy he wanted to be when he grew up. If you can imagine that type of feeling between the two where it was like
00:11:17:03 – 00:11:27:10
Keith
Travis was established out there in the field and Trevor Jacob is younger, up and coming and is looking up to Travis and how he does this.
00:11:27:20 – 00:11:30:10
Keith
back at 2014,
00:11:30:10 – 00:11:56:27
Keith
Trevor Jacob was in the Olympics doing snowboarding. And so they interviewed Travis Pastrana about Trevor Jacob. And I read this after I read all the other stuff in this case, and I’m reading this whole thing and going, I have to put this in the episode because it’s almost all foreshadowing absolutely everything, the way the way Travis is talking about Trevor Jacob. So here are some quotes, some relevant quotes from Travis Pastrana about Trevor Jacob.
00:11:56:27 – 00:12:07:09
Keith
But you have to think this is circa 2014 in the Olympic realm. This is not later on when Trevor Jacob crashed his plane. Okay.
00:12:07:09 – 00:12:25:00
Keith
So Travis says it’s difficult to tell if Trevor is crazy or brilliant. He’s one of the greatest all around athletes I’ve ever had the pleasure of being around. The tree jump was typical Trevor. He puts himself in positions that are way over his head, but always seems to find a way to come out a hero.
00:12:25:02 – 00:12:34:24
Keith
Trevor is so special because his athletic prowess transfers to all action sports. Very few people are great at a single sport. Trevor is great at everything.
00:12:34:24 – 00:12:51:02
Keith
And then Travis was asked the question, Is there anything Jacob would not do? And Trevor says, Trevor is a smart kid. He wouldn’t put himself in a position that he thinks he won’t survive or in a situation that he doesn’t think he can win.
00:12:51:02 – 00:12:59:21
Keith
The problem with being so good is that there aren’t many situations he doesn’t think he can win. And to his credit, he’s probably right.
00:12:59:21 – 00:13:08:03
Keith
And so at the Olympics, Jacob is basically competing against a bunch of snowboarders that have a lot more experience than him.
00:13:08:03 – 00:13:14:22
Keith
So that tone of the article shifts to this. And so then Travis goes on to say,
00:13:14:22 – 00:13:26:23
Keith
There’s no doubt in my mind that he will get everything out of himself. But I don’t know that a part time snowboarder can beat guys that have worked for this their entire life for this moment. Having said that, I would never bet against Trevor.
00:13:26:25 – 00:13:40:29
Keith
There is no one in the games who I would want to win more than him, and I know he could pull an upset. So yeah, I thought, this is pretty funny and think about that later on when we tell you all the stuff that Trevor Jacob did.
00:13:41:02 – 00:14:03:14
Seth
Yeah, I guess I’m going to spoil it. He’s still an asshole. All right, so let’s. Let’s move over to the flight details. So now we’re at November 24th, 2021. So I know Jones totally geeked out over this. What type of airplane was he on? He was on a Taylorcraft, BL-65 with the number N29508.
00:14:03:14 – 00:14:09:16
Seth
Okay. That’s just, I guess, the identifier for the plane. Jones Want to tell us about this airplane?
00:14:09:19 – 00:14:28:20
Keith
Yeah. And that identifier, if you’re not familiar with aviation and if you missed the beginning of it, I have my private pilot’s certificate, so I’ll try to explain as much of this stuff that’s not news articles to you. And hopefully that’ll be a little extra that you get when you listen to us. So I went and they did research on the plane.
00:14:28:20 – 00:14:53:10
Keith
It was a 1940s airplane. That tells you some things. Well, first of all, don’t freak out because most people from car land go into plane land and say 1940s is old, 1940 is not that old in plane world. They get they basically have to do inspections and refurbishments and all this kind of stuff that keeps them very safe.
00:14:53:13 – 00:14:59:24
Keith
So a 1940s airplane is still a safe airplane as much as a 1990s or even a 2020s airplane.
00:14:59:24 – 00:15:16:15
Keith
the one thing I want to mention and we’re going to mention this later on in it’ll make more context to you later on is a 1940s airplane isn’t required to have all the safety stuff that a 1970s airplane I think is. I think the cutoff is 1972.
00:15:16:15 – 00:15:38:26
Keith
I’ll mention it later on. But there’s a cutoff where there’s safety equipment in the airplane such that if you crash a plane, it basically lets satellites know exactly where the plane crash is. And it’s supposed to make everything we’re going to explain to you faster than days, you know, finding out that a plane crashed and where the plane is much faster.
00:15:38:29 – 00:15:40:19
Keith
So the rest of the flight details.
00:15:40:19 – 00:15:50:03
Seth
So the flight was supposed to leave Lompoc City Airport. I’m not sure where that is, but it’s somewhere north of L.A. to Mammoth Lakes, California.
00:15:50:03 – 00:16:17:04
Seth
I think it was a fairly short flight. We’ll have a map to show you guys what that looks like. Now, Jacob had mounted several video cameras to his plane. We actually have that video now. Why would you want to do that? Obviously, because you are going to be filming yourself flying the plane. Okay. So Jones has up a video now for those of you who are only on audio and it gives you a little bit of context of the distance of this flight.
00:16:17:05 – 00:16:21:27
Seth
Jones we have a distance here. Do we have a key that we can kind of tell us? I want to say looks like a couple hundred miles.
00:16:21:29 – 00:16:32:21
Keith
It’s a 120 nautical miles, which is a little longer than a normal driving mile. It’s right. It’s I don’t I don’t even want to go down that route explaining the difference. Yeah.
00:16:32:23 – 00:16:54:05
Seth
Basically, he was flying from somewhere off the coast to inland and a place called Mammoth Lakes. Okay. So and also we mentioned he had a camera selfie stick with him. So that was in a different picture. But he had that as well. When he took off, he was wearing a parachute. Keith, why would somebody ever want to do that?
00:16:54:08 – 00:17:16:15
Keith
You normally don’t for normal flights, you don’t even spin training, which is purposely taking your plane that’s rated to do this out there, making it spin, learning how to recover. So that way, if you ever get in that situation, you’re able to recover from it. Even in that situation, you’re not required to wear a parachute. I’ve done that.
00:17:16:15 – 00:17:39:00
Keith
I’ve done spin training without a parachute. The only times you’re actually required to wear a parachute is when you’re expecting some kind of aerobatics. And that’s it’s pretty rare. I mean, you know, you’re going to be doing aerobatics when you go into it. You don’t just wear a parachute on a normal flight that Seth is going to describe to you here.
00:17:39:02 – 00:17:41:25
Seth
Yeah. So apparently on the flight,
00:17:41:25 – 00:18:09:15
Seth
our hero here was holding a bag that looked like it contained marijuana or weed in it. But apparently it was not. It was the ashes of his friend Johnny Strange, who we found out, find out he died previously in what’s called a wingsuit accident. And I’ll let Jones explain what that is. But the idea was that Trevor was going to spread his friend’s ashes all over the mountains.
00:18:09:17 – 00:18:11:28
Seth
Keith, what’s a wingsuit accident?
00:18:12:00 – 00:18:21:20
Keith
Well, a wingsuit, if you ever, ever seen flying squirrels. And then you’ve seen those people that look like flying squirrels down the mountainsides. That’s a wingsuit.
00:18:21:23 – 00:18:24:15
Seth
And I’ve seen it in the movies.
00:18:24:17 – 00:18:49:09
Keith
Sounded like it was doing one of those type of things. And he ended up dying. And so now Trevor Jacob has the ashes of his friend Johnny Strange that he’s going to spread over the mountains. And let me bring this chart back up for you. This is an actual aviation chart that I pulled from just a free public aviation website.
00:18:49:12 – 00:19:11:07
Keith
And so the Green Arrows, Santa Barbara ish, if you’re on video, by the way, the yellow arrow is the approximate area. I’m guessing he is going to he just kept saying mammoth, which is that mountain range. So it could be more north, but I just kind of picked the southern base and said this is probably the area ish where he’s going.
00:19:11:10 – 00:19:24:10
Keith
Now that distance between those two arrows is about 128 nautical miles, which is just slightly over 128 normal miles in plain terms. If you’re flying a plane of that
00:19:24:10 – 00:19:39:02
Keith
era in an engine, you’re probably that’s going to be probably a two hour flight. Say you go about 60 knots, which is about 60 miles an hour, and you’re looking at about 120, 120 miles out.
00:19:39:02 – 00:20:00:05
Keith
That’s going to be about 2 hours. And then 120 back, that’s going to be a probably another 2 hours. Now, wind can play a huge factor in here, especially with slower planes and I’m probably guessing really low on the speed at 60 miles an hour just to make the math simple, it could be higher or it could be like 80 miles an hour.
00:20:00:05 – 00:20:22:18
Keith
It could be as high, maybe as 100 miles an hour. But you get the picture here that he’s not just jumping in. They’re going up for a few minutes, dropping some ashes, coming back down. He’s going on a very planned flight. Now we have this for you. The whole the whole thing is publicly available. The whole video of this is publicly available.
00:20:22:18 – 00:20:33:11
Keith
We are cutting out the relevant sections and playing them for you so we can talk about them. Now, this is one of those episodes where I really have to apologize to our
00:20:33:11 – 00:20:44:11
Keith
audio only listeners. I’m going to try to pause and describe stuff as much as possible, and so will Seth. But this video, we’re looking at video and it’s going to come across a lot better in video.
00:20:44:11 – 00:20:55:12
Keith
So if you get a chance to look at it on YouTube, it’ll make a lot more sense than the weird sounds that you’ll be hearing in these few video clips will be playing over these next couple of acts for you.
00:20:55:12 – 00:21:09:05
Keith
So with that, I’m going to play the take off video and this is unedited. This is from the point where he takes off to the point where he has engine trouble and the whole segment is one minute and 11 seconds.
00:21:09:05 – 00:21:31:19
Keith
All right. So at this point in the video, there’s a white plane with some blue stripes on it taking off. Looks like a if you haven’t seen this type of plane, think of like an old Piper Cub.
00:21:31:19 – 00:22:13:07
Keith
It has obviously cameras on the tail, on the left wing and and that’s all we’re able to tell at this point in the video.
00:22:13:10 – 00:23:09:13
Keith
So if you didn’t hear him, he was basically saying that it was a beautiful day. And it is there’s not a cloud in the sky if you can’t see this video. And again, if you can jump on the video, it’s a lot easier if you can just see it and he then holds up a bag that looks like some kind of white substance in it, a white gray substance, and says, I got Johnny and we’re on our way to Mammoth.
00:23:09:16 – 00:23:21:04
Keith
And at this point of the video, the engine goes out and it’s very obvious that the engine goes out, it goes quiet. And you see from all the different camera angles that the propeller’s not even
00:23:21:04 – 00:23:23:02
Keith
twisting in the wind at this point.
00:23:23:02 – 00:23:38:09
Keith
All right, so in that video we just showed you, the relevant parts of him taking off. Beautiful day. Nice day for a flight. Cameras apparently mounted everywhere on his airplane and the engine cuts out.
00:23:38:09 – 00:23:43:22
Keith
So now with the engine out and you’re probably saying, Keith, where did the engine go out?
00:23:43:22 – 00:24:04:13
Keith
Now, none of the news articles show you this, so I sort of had to kind of calculate it on my own just based upon what I know as a pilot. And I took that aviation chart that I showed you earlier and I took the information that it was 35 minutes into the flight when this happened. And I know it happens over a mountain range.
00:24:04:13 – 00:24:09:02
Keith
So with that information, I was able to
00:24:09:02 – 00:24:25:15
Keith
I was able to put this map together for you where the green was, the takeoff, the yellow was the landing. And the red is approximately where I think he is when this all goes down. And what I can do is even blow it up for you.
00:24:25:15 – 00:24:28:04
Keith
And you can see there there’s that slight mountain range.
00:24:28:04 – 00:24:47:25
Keith
And that’s where I think this happened, just based upon all the news articles that I read in the court documents saying it was 35 minutes into the flight, which I’m just doing a kind of a back of the napkin calculation and how long the I thought the flight would last. That looked like the mountain range.
00:24:47:25 – 00:24:52:16
Keith
Okay. So with that, we are done with Act One.
00:24:52:19 – 00:25:13:04
Keith
We got a video out of the way, which is him taking off. And the good stuff is about to come at you and this is act two engine out. So if you like anything in this act one please, if you’re on YouTube like this video, subscribe to us. If you’re an audio only podcasting apps, please subscribe to us.
00:25:13:06 – 00:25:35:02
Keith
If you’re on any type of social media that we stream this to like Twitter or X I guess it’s called now LinkedIn, Facebook, any of those just like our content, if you could reshare it and if you’re on Apple Podcasts, especially if you could leave us a five star and a review, we would really appreciate that because that helps us move up the charts.
00:25:35:02 – 00:25:46:10
Keith
And Apple Podcasts is about half of our audio listeners. So with that, thanks for sticking around for Act One and we will see you tomorrow on Act two Engines out.
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