A pair of YouTuber twins are facing felony charges over a 'prank' video where they staged a fake bank robbery.
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Last October, YouTubers Alan and Alex Stokes filmed a video where they called an Uber driver while pretending to be bank robbers carrying ski masks and carrying duffel bags of cash. Witnesses thought it was a carjacking and called police, who surrounded the car with guns drawn before realizing it was a scam.
But did Alan and Alex learn their lesson? No. They then tried to pull the same stunt in a different part of town, just a few hours later...
“These were not pranks,” District Atty. Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “These are crimes that could have resulted in someone getting seriously injured or even killed. Law enforcement officers are sworn to protect the public and when someone calls 911 to report an active bank robbery they are going to respond to protect lives. Instead, what they found was some kind of twisted attempt to gain more popularity on the internet by unnecessarily putting members of the public and police officers in danger.”
Now the twins - who boast over 25 million TikTok followers and 4 million YouTube subscribers - have been charged with false imprisonment and falsely reporting an emergency.
According to prosecutors, they each face a maximum sentence of four years in state prison if convicted on all counts.
Read the full report on the Los Angeles Times.