Meet Param Sharma, the Tesla Backseat Driver, Self-proclaimed ‘Rich Kid’ who Uses Social Media for Self Promotion

Over the years, Param Sharma, described as social media influencer, has gained notoriety for his lavish lifestyle and his rich-kid antics. His obnoxious display of wealth has also earned him tags like ‘Instagram’s Richest Kid’ and ‘Instagram’s Biggest Jerk.’ MTV once called him “Instagram’s Richest Teen,” and Digital Trends said he was “Instagram’s biggest troll.” 

“I’m a gold collar u a blue collar 25 left the pandemic richer than ever before,” says the introduction to his Instagram profile. 

A glance through his profile  — ‘goldcollarlavish’ and ‘itslavishbitch’ — shows the 25-year-old Bay Area man flaunting his wealth. There are numerous videos of him sitting in the back of a Tesla on autopilot. In other posts he seen showing off Rolex watches and Cartier bracelets, and a Louis Vuitton backpack. There’s also a photo of him lying on his bed, surrounded with piles of cash, and another one of him drowning bottles of champagne in a toilet bowl. “Only take shits in sparkling water peasants,” he captioned the photo posted on June 18, 2018. He currently has 7,358 followers on Instagram. And almost to prove a point, Sharma released his own rap song, called “I Get Everything I Want” in 2013.

Reckless Stunts

Sharma’s lavish and flamboyant life style has often got him into trouble. Earlier this week, he was arrested for “reckless driving of a Tesla while in the backseat on Interstate 80 (I-80) in the Bay Area.” He was arrested without incident and booked into Santa Rita Jail for a day on two counts of reckless driving and disobeying a Peace Officer, California Highway Patrol (CHP)  said in a statement on its Facebook page. The Tesla was towed from the scene for evidence, CHP noted, adding that the incident remains under investigation.

However, Sharma’s stint in jail did nothing to curb his enthusiasm for reckless stunts. On May 12, he was again spotted riding the backseat of a Tesla. “I just got out jail, I already got a Tesla – I’m rich like that I came out of the pandemic f*****g rich, b***h,” he says in a video posted on Instagram. “They threw away my last Tesla so I f***ed around and got another one,” he adds. 

In another post he writes: “I was Elon Musk’s first RoboTaxi passenger. It’s like the iPhone, all over again.”

Sharma claims that he is he’s trying to prove a point: that driverless cars are the “way of the future.” Tesla’s driver-assist features under its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving packages are still considered “level 2” on the self-driving scale, and they should always be used with full driver attention and the driver being ready to take control at all times.

Sharma told KTVU that he’s “been brake-checked before really hard, and the car stopped. The car came to a complete stop. Elon Musk really knows what he’s doing and I think people are tripping and they’re scared,” he said.

Prior to Sharma’s May 11 arrest, at least two people had captured a video of him operating his vehicle in the same reckless manner. YouTuber Ingineerix had posted six seconds of footage that appear to depict Sharma staring straight into the camera lens as the driver of a neighboring car records him. Titling the clip, “Another dumba** abusing Tesla AP,”  Ingineerix, who SFGATE described as a friend of the videographer, wrote: “To be clear; There is nothing wrong with Tesla AP. It’s a driver assistance system that’s being abused. It’s no different than shifting your 2005 Honda Accord into D and climbing in the back seat, but the Tesla is a lot safer to do it in. The problem is the owner,” Ingineerix wrote.

Not his First Rodeo

Sharma has been cited in the past for reckless driving, said the CHP statement, adding that it s branch in Oakland Area had cited Sharma on April 27 for similar behavior. 

In 2014, Sharma ended up behind bars with a 90-day sentence for selling a stolen iPhone on Craigslist. Sharma’s lawyer, Andrew Shalaby told Buzzfeed then that his client allegedly posted the iPhone on Craigslist as a favor for a friend who found the lost item and didn’t have the technological means to list it himself. The person who purchased the phone discovered it was tagged as a stolen item while trying to activate the device and later presented it to police. Police responded by arresting Sharma at a restaurant on Aug. 14, 2014, and placing him under $30,000 bail. 

However, Sharma, then 17, was “accidentally transferred” to the jail’s psych ward. “He’s in block F, according to the Sgt. here, the worst of the worst in the section of a psych ward,” Shalaby told Buzfeed. Shelby also claimed that Sharma was attacked. “Somebody tried to kill him and I was really, really upset,” Shalaby said. The judge said he didn’t sentence Sharma to a psych ward. He sentenced him to jail. Sharma reportedly remained in the jails psych ward for two weeks, before his attorney could get him out of there. 

Who is Param Sharma?

Apart from flaunting his wealth, Sharma repeatedly taunts other people for not being wealthy. In the past, Sharma has called common people “peasants” In one video he smirks and says: “You guys r all cheap poor low class peasants that can’t afford lambo trucks and i11’s I purposely drive it in ur ghetto to make you feel small. In another he says: “I buy penthouses in the sky too look down on poor #onerinconhill #sanfrancisco.” According to SFGate, Sharma “sometimes trashes celebrities online to get infamy,” including Soulja Boy and Kim Kardashian. He “onve accused Rihanna of jacking his style,” SFGate said. 

In a June 18, 2013 interview Sharma told Vice that he does crazy things on Instagram because “people feed off the crazy things I do.” He said he’s using wealth as comedy. “They see these things and they find it funny since they don’t do it on an average day—like my $2,000 receipt that said “economical meal.” That’s funny to them because they think two grand is a lot of cash for a lunch. It’s nothing to me. And there’s humor in that.”

Despite his middling fame, not much is known about Sharma. He keeps his personal life incredibly private, and there’s not much information available on his family. Whether he is really as rich as he says and what his background is has been the subject of much Internet speculation. At one point, he was beleived to be the son of Shikha Sharma, the then-CEO of Axix Band, one of India’s largest banks. Those speculations were put to rest when the bank put out a statement debunking the rumors. 

In the 2013 interview with Vice, when asked his his parents came into their fortune through oil or banking, Sharma answered: “They’re definitely not in the oil business. I can tell you that, but we prefer to not comment on it because of their reputation.”

According to a SFGate report, Sharma attended Albany High School “sometime in the 2010s.” One of his former classmates told SFGate that Sharma has “just been really kind of one of those guys who acts out, one of those guys who really needs to be the center of attention and to an extent turning dangerous or unacceptable, pretty much a constant thorn in the side of the school administration.”

Whether he’s actually rich or not, Sharma’s lavish lifestyle and his rich-kid antics are definitely giving him infamy — that is until he gets put behind bars again.