He should have known he would get caught the aviation community and the FAA was always going to analyze every frame of that video and every detail of the flight log and plan. I'm mostly surprised that he could think he could get away with it...
The issue for him was less that he intentionally crashed the plane for views and more that he lied to investigators about knowing where the crash was, then went out and retrieved the crashed plane, chopped it, and stashed different bits of it in different dumpsters. Surprised he only got 6 months to be honest.
That seems really light to me, especially with the lengths he also went to to cover this up. But I don't really know the ins and outs of the system, just an onlooker scratching his head as to why only 6 months.