The reason META founder Mark Zuckerberg’s megayacht ignored a maritime distress signal from a fuel-starved skiff drifting helplessly in the waters between Petersburg and Juneau, Alaska, was that adults aboard the yacht were cavorting with minors, some as young as 12, according to current and former META employees familiar with Zuckerberg’s floating palace of perverted pleasures.
On the evening of August 3, a 21-foot skiff carrying two women, a child, and a dog hailed the U.S. Coast Guard for assistance around 9:32 p.m. local time while in the vicinity of Point Highland. The Coast Guard determined it was not in distress and issued a marine assistance request broadcast around 9:56 p.m. The nearby UnCruise Adventures vessel Wilderness Legacy responded, towed the skiff to Farragut Bay, and helped refuel it. However, another vessel, Zuckerberg’s 387-foot yacht, Launchpad, had been closer to the yacht than Wilderness Legacy when the distress call was issued. Maritime law mandates that the nearest vessel to a disabled ship must provide aid. Therefore, the Launchpad ought to have at once steered toward the wayward skiff.
But Launchpad never answered the emergency hails. META spokesperson Andy Stone would later say Launchpad never heard the distress call because its crew had been monitoring a different frequency. Navy captains we spoke with, as well as merchant marines and META employees who had previously been on the Launchpad, said Stone was blatantly lying. A ship like Zuckerberg’s Launchpad, they said, has at least two radios, one of which constantly monitors VHF Channel 16 (156.8 MHz), used worldwide for “Mayday” calls in coastal and intercoastal waters.
A former META employee who had been on Launchpad’s bridge three times supplied Real Raw News with cellphone pictures he had taken of the ship’s radio stack; the image captured a radio tuned to VHF Channel 16. Moreover, he said Zuckerberg—who purportedly was not on the Launchpad on August 3—often leased the vessel out to adult men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who boarded it with child companions.
“I don’t know if Mark had any clue about the people using his ship. He lets friends use it and loans it out. Before I left the company last year, I made META a lot of money, so Mark rewarded me with a 5-day trip on Launchpad. All expenses paid. He paid for my flight from Seattle to Juneau, where his ship was—but I got there, and shit just wasn’t right. Grown men were snuggling with bikini-clad girls that looked like young teenagers. I saw a big tech CEO pull down a young girl’s bikini top and tell who I guess were her friends, “This is mine, what I’m fucking,” with unbridled pride.
That source told RRN he disembarked and resigned from META.
A current META employee’s story was more salacious and disturbing. He supplied RRN with undeniable proof he was aboard the Launchpad when the skiff sent out a distress signal and that the bridge crew, including its captain, Jason Sanchez, heard the alert loud and clear but opted to ignore it.
Private superyachts of this size and ownership typically keep crew details (including the captain’s name) confidential for privacy and security reasons, so no verified public name has surfaced in news reports or yacht directories.
“Sanchez knew what was going on, and so did I,” our source said.
Twelve teenage girls, he said, had been “recruited” to entertain 16 adult male passengers. The men, he said, got the girls stoned and drunk—bottles of booze and cocaine—before bringing them to cabins below deck.
“Yeah, we heard the emergency signal, and Sanchez debated whether to throw the girls overboard and answer the call or just ignore it. He ignored it,” the source said.
Asked whether Zuckerberg was present at the time, he said, “No, Mark wasn’t there.”