The teenager who created a Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk's private jet has turned his talents to a new subject... Russian oligarchs.
Jack Sweeney created a Twitter account called Russian Oligarch Jets, which has started tracking the whereabouts of some of Russia's wealthiest businessmen, posting when and where their aircraft takes off and lands.
The automated feed has tracked the helicopters, private jets, and commercial airplanes of several billionaires, including Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, considered the wealthiest in the nation.
The first tweet was posted on Sunday after the US sanctioned the wealthiest families from Russia and threatened to freeze their assets, including yachts and mansions.
"The aircraft these oligarchs have are absolutely crazy. Their planes are huge compared to other jets," the 19-year-old told Bloomberg, adding that Russian billionaires preferred flying in commercial-sized aircraft such as the Airbus A319 and Boeing 737.
After the announcement, some of Russia's wealthiest individuals started moving their megayachts to Montenegro and the Maldives, CNBC reported.
On Monday, The European Union added 26 more names, including Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, businessmen active in the oil, banking, and finance sectors, as well as government members and high-level military people, to its sanctions list.
Sweeney also created another account to track planes registered to the Russian president and other prominent Russians, but warned against the accuracy as there isn't much available flight data.
The teenager first grabbed global attention after Elon Musk offered to pay him $5,000 to shut down his account tracking the Tesla CEO's flights, calling it a "security risk".
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.
This account, created in 2020, has more than 385,000 followers and relies on bots to scrape publicly available air-traffic information.
"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.
Musk then blocked the teenager on Twitter.
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