YouTube star WhistlinDiesel, better known offline as Cody Detwiler, says he has been taken into custody yet again, this time after landing back in the United States. The truck‑smashing, supercar‑destroying creator is now treating airport security lines as a recurring crime scene, with his latest arrest tied to an ongoing tax fight that has been shadowing his channel. For a guy who built a brand on breaking things, the real damage may come from how these charges collide with his high‑dollar car collection and his carefully cultivated outlaw image.
From viral stunts to a tax indictment
Before the airport drama, the legal trouble started with a tax case that pulled Cody Detwiler out of the comments section and into a courtroom. In Nov, YouTuber Cody Detwiler was arrested in Williamson County, Tenneesee, after an indictment that accused him of tax evasion tied to his booming automotive content business. That case did not come out of nowhere, it followed years of increasingly expensive builds and destruction videos that turned his WhistlinDiesel persona into a full‑time operation with serious money flowing through it.
One of the flashpoints was his decision to buy and then heavily modify a Ferrari F8, a move that blended content strategy with complicated paperwork. Reporting on the indictment notes that he bought a car for $115,000, then shipped the 115,000 pound‑plus machine to another state as part of a project that echoed his earlier decision to rebuild the infamous “Killdozer,” a stunt that garnered over 16. That kind of scale is exactly why tax authorities started paying attention, because once a creator is moving six‑figure cars around the country for content, the line between entertainment and taxable business activity gets very real.
The Tennessee airport arrest and the Montana car twist
The latest chapter unfolded at a Tennessee Airport, where Detwiler says he was stopped after reentering the country and then arrested over the same broader tax dispute. He has described being detained at a Tennessee airport in Jan, telling followers that the encounter was not about drugs or weapons but about unpaid taxes linked to his car collection, a claim echoed in coverage that ties the arrest to possibly $30,000 in. Detwiler has framed the situation as an overreaction to paperwork, arguing that the state is chasing him over technicalities rather than real fraud.
On social media, Youtuber Cody Detwiler, a.k.a. WhistlinDiesel, has leaned into the spectacle of the arrest, claiming that Officials swarmed him at the terminal. In one account, he says the operation involved “25+ police officers and agents” who converged on him over two cars registered in Montana, a detail that lines up with reports that the dispute centers on vehicles titled in that state to take advantage of looser tax rules, a tactic some exotic‑car owners use to cut their bills. A widely shared clip notes that two cars registered are at the heart of the fight, which helps explain why tax agents, not traffic cops, were waiting at the gate.
Detwiler has also stressed how quickly he got out, using the short stay as proof that the case is more bureaucratic than criminal. Coverage of his posts notes that he was released on a $25,000 bond after what he described as roughly 50 m in custody, a timeline that suggests the airport arrest was more about processing an outstanding warrant than building a fresh case from scratch. One report points out that $25,000 bond was enough to walk him back out of the jail the same day, while another notes that he told fans he spent only 50 m behind bars before heading home.
Why the tax fight hits differently for a stunt‑driven creator
For a channel built on wrecking trucks and shredding supercars, a tax case might sound boring, but it cuts straight into how Detwiler funds the chaos that made him famous. His own video response, titled around being arrested again, shows Cody Detwiler calmly walking viewers through the airport stop, the prior indictment and the controversy over a Ferrari F8, turning the whole thing into another piece of content. In that clip, Cody Detwiler confirms he was arrested on January 25 at the airport and folds the legal drama into his usual mix of bravado and behind‑the‑scenes storytelling, signaling to fans that he sees the state as just another obstacle to plow through.
At the same time, the details surfacing around the case show why tax authorities are not treating this like a harmless misunderstanding. Reports on the border‑style arrest describe how Detwiler’s long‑running dispute over vehicle taxes escalated into a coordinated stop involving multiple agencies, with one account highlighting that the confrontation grew out of a broader tax fight rather than a random search. Another breakdown of the Tennessee Airport incident notes that YouTuber WhistlinDiesel, whose real name is Cody Detwiler, shared his version of events in detail and laid out why he believes the state is targeting him, tying the whole saga back to how he titles and moves his high‑end cars through different jurisdictions like Tennessee and Montana.
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