Alan and Alex Stokes YouTube Pranksters Facing 4 Years In Jail For Fake Bank Robbery Video

We all love watching prank videos on YouTube, whether it is YouTubers scaring people in the middle of the night dressed as ghosts or innocent pranks by kids that look super adorable.

But no one likes it when it goes too far, especially not the Irvine Police Department.

YouTube: Stokes Twins

YouTube pranksters (who possess over 4.81 million subscribers) Alan and Alex Stokes have been charged with a felony in relation to a fake bank robbery prank that they did in Irvine, California in October 2019. They played a prank on an Uber driver and other random bystanders, where they pretended to have robbed a bank, wearing ski masks and holding bags full of cash and seeking assistance.

Soon after, the Irvine Police Department arrived at the scene, held the Uber driver at gunpoint. They released him soon after realising that he¡¯s not a part of the staged robbery. When the Stokes brothers finally came out, revealing their true identities, the cops weren¡¯t impressed. They let the brothers go after issuing a serious warning.

But this wasn¡¯t really the end of it as soon a few hours later, the YouTuber duo played an identical prank in a university. This resulted in emergency 911 calls hitting the police helpline with students from the university complaining about a bank being robbed.

Irvine Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement, ¡°These were not pranks. 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.¡±

AFP Via Getty Images

The YouTubers have been charged with a felony count of ¡®false imprisonment affected by violence, menace fraud or deceit¡¯ as well as one misdemeanour count of falsely reporting an emergency for the prank that took place in October 2019.

The prank video has been pulled down. The YouTube prankster brothers are looking at a maximum sentence of four years in state prison if convicted on call counts.