Florida teen who tracked Elon Musk’s plane now tracking jets of Russian billionaires
ORLANDO, Fla. - A 19-year-old University of Central Florida student who went viral for tracking SpaceX founder Elon Musks' jet now has launched a new Twitter venture: tracking the jets of Russian billionaires.
FOX 35 introduced you to Jack Sweeney, a freshman at UCF, in January after he made the Twitter bot @ElonJet that tracks Musk’s private jet and tweets his whereabouts. His story went viral after Musk reportedly offered Sweeney $5,000 to take it down.
DOWNLOAD: FOX 35 NEWS APP | FOX 35 STORM TEAM WEATHER APP
SUBSCRIBE: FOX 35 NEWSLETTER | FOX 35 Orlando on YouTube
FOLLOW: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Sweeney has now launched @RUOligarchJets to track the helicopters, private jets and commercial-sized airplanes of Russian Oligarchs. His most recent tweets show the whereabouts of Alexander Abramov, a former scientist who became one of the two heads at Russia's largest steel producer, and Roman Abramovich, a billionaire and Chelsea football club owner.
RELATED: UCF student says he was offered $5K by Elon Musk to stop tracking billionaire's private jet
The new account was launched as prominent Russians come under pressure over the invasion of Ukraine and already has over 127,000 followers.
Sweeney told Bloomberg: "The aircrafts these oligarchs have are absolutely crazy. Their planes are huge compared to other jets." According to the publication, Sweeney noted that Russia's richest were traveling on commercial-sized aircrafts like an Airbus A319 and Boeing 737.
MORE NEWS: What should you do in case of a nuclear explosion? U.S. government updates guidance
In January, Sweeney told FOX 35 that he uses websites that publicly and legally track plane transponders. He uses his IT and coding skills and love of planes to aggregate that information to make a bot that automatically posts flight updates on his accounts.
Watch FOX 35 News for the latest launch updates.