Angry because his single YouTube video on how to get rich quickly had been taken down, 33-year-old Kyle Long drove more than 3,300 miles from his home in Waterville, Maine, to Google's headquarters in California, intent on convincing the tech giant to restore his account.

But what Long didn't know, relatives told BuzzFeed News, was that the video and his account had been deleted not by YouTube, but his wife. Concerned about his mental state, she deleted the "rambling" and "bizarre" video.

"I just didn't tell him it was me taking it down because I didn't want him losing his shit in front of my kids," Samantha Long, his wife, told BuzzFeed News. "He was mad initially, but I said I didn't know what happened."

Long's wife and father said the 33-year-old has had a history of mental health issues and became fixated on the video, telling friends and family he planned to talk to Google executives about it and was sure that his ideas would result in the company paying him millions of dollars.

"He came up with this crazy idea to make everyone millionaires," Kevin Long, his father, said. "He had good intentions — he wanted to solve world hunger and this and that. It was bizarre and crazy, and it wasn't going to happen."


When the video was deleted, his wife said, Long believed it was removed by YouTube officials and he decided to pitch the contents directly to the company.

Instead, Kyle Long was arrested Sunday by Mountain View police in California on suspicion of making threats against Google.

Google declined to comment on the matter.

The incident comes nearly a year after another YouTuber opened fire at the company's headquarters, injuring three people before killing herself in San Bruno.

That shooter had driven to YouTube's headquarters from San Diego after she alleged the company "discriminated and filtered" her vegan and animal rights videos.

A spokesperson for Mountain View police told BuzzFeed News that Kyle Long didn't threaten specific people at Google, but that the Maine resident had "made general threats of violence towards unknown people if the meeting regarding his YouTube channel didn't go as he wanted it to."

Samantha Long said her husband's idea of approaching Google officials about the video wasn't initially to confront them about the deletion, but to pitch the content of the video directly, thinking it would lead to an immediate payout from Google executives.

"He made me sit down, and he did a mock presentation to me," Samantha Long said.

After what he was sure to be a billion-dollar payout, she said, he planned to head down to Mexico with his fortune.

Samantha said she tried to talk him out of it and explain to him that YouTube would not pay him for the idea, but he would have none of it.

"You can't talk Kyle down from anything if he's got his mindset," she said. "He told me that I didn't know what I was talking about, and that I didn't have the mind that he has — that I'm not open minded and I'm basic."