Elon Musk Blocks Kid Who Wanted $50,000 To Stop Tracking His Private Jet
Poppy Bilderbeck
Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has blocked a 19-year-old on Twitter after he made a higher counteroffer when Musk asked him to stop tracking his private jet.
In June 2020, Jack Sweeney created a Twitter account called Elon Musk's Jet to track the current richest man in the world's private jet and share updates of his movements.
The account has racked up more than 300,000 followers, and in a bid to try and get it taken down – citing security concerns – Musk offered Sweeney $5,000.
However, the teen turned the sum down, instead asking for $50,000, which led to Musk blocking Sweeney altogether.
The Twitter account states that it is 'tracking Elon Musk's Private Jet (N628TS) with a bot using public ADS-B data'.
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Sweeney said he first created the page because he was 'really interested in Elon Musk, and Tesla and SpaceX' and wanted to see 'where [the CEO] goes and what business he's up to', The Guardian reports.
He said: 'I asked for $50,000, he said 'thinking about it', then after a while last week he said, 'I don't think it's right to pay to take this down,' and just the other night he blocked me.
'He didn’t have to block me. I can get why he’s mad. Some of them, they don’t like the news, so if it’s all over the news, you can totally see why he would be like that,' Sweeney told New York Post.
However, despite the response he's had from the Tesla CEO, Sweeney isn't planning on stopping his tracking anytime soon.
The teen has even expanded his search to include other billionaires too, such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, using 16 bots to track their private jets.
Sweeney explained how Drake's plane is 'a giant Boeing' and 'the biggest plane out of all of 'em'.
Despite still currently being at university, as a result of his successful tracking Sweeney has been offered a job from Stratos Jet Charters in Orlando.
Stratos CEO Joel Thomas noted Sweeney's 'creativity' in starting the account. 'Understanding that he is currently enrolled at UCF, Stratos is happy to work with him on a project basis, part-time or internship to help him further his educational goals,' he said.
Reflecting on the job offer, Sweeney said: 'It was pretty cool. They're UCF alumni, so it's pretty interesting. There's just a lot of UCF that think it's cool.'
While he weighs up the offer, which he is 'not sure' about yet, Sweeney is working part-time for UberJets alongside his studies.
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