The Bell 206 helicopter that crashed in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, killing Oliver Tree and five others, already had a paper trail at Brazil’s aviation agency. Regulators received a formal complaint about the aircraft in early 2025, over a year before the fatal collision.
Tree, 32, died Sunday morning when two helicopters collided midair over Recreio dos Bandeirantes, the city’s Civil Police confirmed. Six people were killed across both aircraft, among them Argentine YouTuber Gaspar “Gaspi” Prim, Argentine director Lucas Vignale, and Brazilian music producer Lucas Brito Chaves. There were no survivors.
The helicopter carrying them was reported to Brazil’s civil aviation agency, ANAC, in March 2025, according to documents cited by Metrópoles. The complaint alleged the aircraft was being used for unauthorized commercial passenger flights marketed by the charter firms STARVIP and Helivip out of Rio’s Jacarepaguá airport, along with lapsed maintenance and inconsistent flight logs.
ANAC opened a review. It archived the case in June 2025 without finding formal proof of the illegal-charter claims, per Metrópoles. The aircraft, like the second helicopter in the collision, was registered for private use only and barred from air-taxi service, though the agency says both were otherwise in regular standing.
The owner did draw a penalty. ANAC fined Oswaldo de Luca Filho, whose fruit-trading company, Turfik Comércio de Frutas, holds the helicopter’s registration, 8,000 Brazilian reals (about $1,580) in 2025 after he refused to show inspectors the aircraft’s books and records and filed no defense. Because it was a first offense, it was issued at the regulatory minimum.
Rio runs one of the busiest private-helicopter markets in the world, and aircraft cleared only for private flights moving paying passengers is an open secret in its skies. The people who book those seats are rarely the ones who could know the difference. Tree was in Brazil on his world tour and had played São Paulo a week earlier.
The crash sent one helicopter into an electric-vehicle storage lot, where burning lithium batteries made the fire harder to put out. Brazil’s Air Force and ANAC are investigating what caused the collision. No cause has been released.
