Where’s Elon? Teen IT Whiz Offered Big Money To Shelve Flight-Tracking Site

A 19-year-old Florida college student has raised a ruckus over his social media account that broadcast position data on billionaire Elon Musk’s Gulfstream G650ER. Like many aircraft, Musk’s Gulfstream is blocked from the popular flight-tracking sites, but that proved little impediment to tech whiz Jack Sweeney, who set up a Twitter account to alert up to 130,000 subscribers of the real-time whereabouts of Musk’s aircraft. The entrepreneur’s wealth is listed as $267 billion.

Musk reportedly offered the teen $5,000 last fall to take the site offline, but Sweeney demurred, asking for another zero in front of the offer’s decimal point, or, perhaps, a luxury car in exchange—though he did admit that he was joking “… unless?” Musk said that offering more money did not “feel right,” and appealed to a sense of doing-the-right-thing, citing Sweeney’s activity as a “security risk” and messaging the teen, “I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase.”

To his credit, Sweeney said he’d rather have an internship offer from Musk than cash. But when he received a job offer with a jet charter firm in Orlando, Sweeney admitted that he was already working in IT for a competitor. “I'm on an NDA [non-disclosure agreement], so I can't really take it," he said.