Was MH370 ‘Teleported’ by Orbs? Rolling Stone Profiles the Theory’s Loudest Voice. Here’s What the Videos Actually Are.

CASE FILE: RW-DAILY-2026-1112-PM

Subject: Claim that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 (Boeing 777, registration 9M-MRO) was “teleported” by orb-shaped craft, based on two videos first posted to YouTube in 2014

Key dates: Disappearance 8 March 2014 · Satellite-view clip uploaded 19 May 2014 · Viral revival August 2023 · Rolling Stone profile 11 November 2026

Location: Southern Indian Ocean (official search area); the internet (everything else)

Status: Videos DEBUNKED (fabricated) · Teleportation claim DEBUNKED · Cause of disappearance still officially undetermined (CONFIRMED)

The claim

According to the man most associated with it, the United States military teleported a passenger jet full of people out of the sky in 2014 to send China a message.

That is the theory laid out in a Rolling Stone profile published 11 November 2026 by Mattha Busby. Its subject, Ashton Forbes, is described as a 44-year-old healthcare IT consultant from St. Paul, Minnesota, who has spent three years arguing on X and YouTube that MH370 was taken by orb-like “plasma” craft carrying fusion reactors. The magazine reports he has more than 300,000 followers on X and 100,000 YouTube subscribers, and has appeared on shows hosted by Candace Owens, Alex Jones and Danny Jones. By the next morning, X had a trending news card on the profile.

Forbes told the magazine his whole worldview rests on two videos. So does this case file.

The video evidence first

Clip descriptions below come from each video’s title and description, from Corridor Crew’s auto-generated captions (timestamps from those captions), and from the published analyses cited. The original 2014 uploads were deleted; Forbes’s channel hosts a re-upload.

1. “MH370 Stereoscopic Satellite Video,” Ashton Forbes (re-upload)

• Uploaded: 26 November 2023 (re-upload). Its description labels it the “Original RegicideAnon Video,” says it was “Received – March 12th, 2014, Uploaded – May 19th, 2014,” and links an archived copy of the original.
• Length: 2:03
• What it shows (per Skeptical Inquirer’s description): clouds over a blue ocean; a plane banks in from the top left; about 15 seconds later a white orb begins looping it, joined by two more; a flash, and the plane and orbs vanish.

2. “VFX Artists DEBUNK Flight MH370 Alien Abduction ‘Footage’,” Corridor Crew

• Uploaded: 28 November 2023
• Length: 18:06
• Key timestamps (per captions): 5:20, the team points out that the satellite-view clouds are “not evolving in any way,” calling it “a still frame,” despite a satellite moving at roughly 17,000 mph. 7:04, Niko Pueringer says the underlying footage is “a 3D render on top of a still frame of clouds.” 8:19 to 8:34, they show the flash beside “a stock footage clip from the ’90s” and call it “an identified stock asset,” noting the pixels will not match exactly without the artist’s settings.

3. “MH370 UFO Video Exposed: VFX Artist Reveals the TRUE Story | Corridor Crew VS Ashton Forbes,” Danny Jones

• Uploaded: 24 November 2023
• Length: 3:18:10
• What it covers (per its description and Skeptical Inquirer): Forbes explains how his theory developed; Jones raises the stock-explosion match. Mick West, writing in Skeptical Inquirer, reports that Jones ultimately concluded the videos were fake.

Timeline

• 8 March 2014 (local time): MH370 disappears from radar on a Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight with 239 people aboard.
• 19 May 2014: YouTube account RegicideAnon posts the “satellite” clip. About three weeks later a second, “thermal drone” version follows, Skeptical Inquirer reports.
• 29 July 2015 onward: Debris begins washing up in the western Indian Ocean. A right flaperon found on Réunion is confirmed as 9M-MRO’s.
• 3 October 2017: Australia’s ATSB publishes its final report, The Operational Search for MH370.
• 29 May 2018: Ocean Infinity’s first search ends after covering about 112,000 sq km without finding the wreck, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the next day (The Edge).
• 30 July 2018: Malaysia releases the MH370 Safety Investigation Report.
• August 2023: The clips resurface on Reddit’s r/UFOs. Mick West posts a debunk video on 21 August.
• 18 November 2023: Kim Dotcom promotes the videos on X; a $100,000 bounty for the original footage follows. Days later, a Redditor matches the clouds to stock photos.
• 29 June 2026: Malaysia extends its “no find, no fee” deal with Ocean Infinity to 30 June 2027 to cover the remaining 7,428.54 sq km, with a deployment window of November 2026 to April 2027 (Malay Mail; Reuters).
• 11 November 2026: Rolling Stone publishes its Forbes profile.

What believers claim

In Forbes’s version, as Rolling Stone reports it, the U.S. secretly built fusion-powered technology that can manipulate space-time, filmed the operation from a drone and satellites, and has hidden it ever since. He pledged $150,000 to anyone who conclusively proves the videos fake, and says the only ways to do that are to find the creator, find the plane, get a named former Navy officer to talk, or get a U.S. government statement. When the cloud photos surfaced, he told the magazine they “must have been planted online by the U.S. intelligence agencies.” He also points to a Defense Intelligence Agency paper on “traversable wormholes” in a September 2026 batch of released UAP files as vindication; Rolling Stone notes that paper is theoretical.

What the research found

1. The clouds are a 2012 photo set. According to Mick West in Skeptical Inquirer, an anonymous Redditor found the cloud background on a stock-texture site specializing in game assets, in reference photos dated 2012, two years before the plane vanished. The site’s owner checked the file dates, and the photographer, Jonas De Ro, supplied his raw originals. West reports that portions of those high-resolution images match every frame of the video.