Elon Musk is fighting with a teenager.
The Tesla founder and world's richest person is in the midst of a Twitter spat with Jack Sweeney - a 19-year-old Florida student who won't stop tracking his private jet.
Aviation enthusiast Sweeney created the Twitter bot @ElonJet, which posts real-time updates of Musk's Gulfstream jet's location.
After discovering the account, Musk - who is worth an estimated $220 billion per The Guardian - pleaded with the teenager to delete it.
"Can you take this down? It is a security risk," Musk wrote in a direct message to Sweeney which the teenager has since made public.
"I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase," the SpaceX founder added.
After a series of messages in which Sweeney explained how he was able to track Musks' jet - and argued that since he was making money of the account he wasn't going to delete it without compensation - the billionaire offered him a deal.
"How about $5k for this account and generally helping make it harder for crazy people to track me?" Musk wrote.
Sweeney took the offer as his cue to begin negotiations.
"Any chance to up that to $50K? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car, maybe even a [Tesla] Model 3," he responded.
Musk replied that he would consider the counter-offer before declining.
"It doesn’t feel right to pay to shut this down," he told Sweeney.
The tech-savvy teen has since gone public with their correspondence, telling Insider that he published their DM's to try and get Musk back at the negotiating table.
"I've done a lot of work on this and 5k is not enough," he said, adding that the sum wouldn't make up for "the fun I have in this, working on it."
As a last-ditch negotiation, Sweeney told Musk he would delete the account in return for a Tesla internship. That was the last thing he said to Musk before the billionaire blocked him.
Sweeney also explained how the Tesla founder has since implemented some of the technical advice he had suggested to make it harder for his jet to be tracked. However, he reassured followers that it wasn't anything he couldn't work around.
Musk is still yet to respond - but he isn't the only billionaire who Sweeney could soon have in his pocket.
Aswell as ElonJet the college student as also set up accounts that track Bill Gates' and Jeff Bezos' private planes.
