Entertainment
YouTubers Alex and Alan Stokes plead guilty to two misdemeanours over bank robbery prank videos
YouTubers Alex and Alan Stokes have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanours after they pretended to be bank robbers for stunt videos in 2019.
The 23-year-old twins each faced a felony count of false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit and one misdemeanour count of falsely reporting an emergency, after their prank video resulted in an Uber driver being held at gunpoint by police.
They each faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted on all counts.
However, in exchange for their guilty plea, their charges were reduced to misdemeanour counts of false imprisonment and reporting false emergencies.
A judge sentenced each of the brothers to 160 hours of community service and one year of formal probation, with the twins also ordered to pay restitution.
Alan and Alex, from Irvine, must also stay away from the University of California, Irvine — the location of one of the crimes — and ‘stop making videos that mimic criminal behaviour,’ according to the office of the District Attorney in Orange County, California.
On October 15, 2019, the Stokes brothers dressed all in black, wearing ski masks and carrying duffle bags full of cash, as they pretended they had just robbed a bank while their videographer filmed it.
They ordered an Uber and when they got in the vehicle the Uber driver, who was unaware of the prank, refused to drive them. A bystander witnessed this, believing the two men had just robbed a bank and were attempting to carjack the Uber driver.
Irvine police arrived and ordered the Uber driver out at gunpoint; he was released after police determined he was not involved.
Police issued a warning to the Stokes brothers about the dangerousness of their conduct and let them go, but four hours later, the YouTubers performed the same kind of prank on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, with police again receiving emergency calls regarding a potential bank robbery.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said: ‘These crimes could have easily resulted in someone being seriously hurt or killed. An active bank robbery is not a casual police response and these police officers were literally risking their lives to help people they believed were in danger.
‘It is irresponsible and reckless that these two individuals cared more about increasing their number of followers on the internet than the safety of those police officers or the safety of the innocent Uber driver who was ordered out of his car at gunpoint.’
Alex and Alan shared the ‘pranks’ in a video uploaded to YouTube on October 20, titled ‘BANK ROBBER PRANK! (gone wrong)’, which received over one million views.
The video, which was made private on August 5, 2020, showed the twins’ interaction with the Uber driver, as the footage showed them telling the driver: ‘Our getaway driver just bailed on us.’
The driver is heard saying: ‘This is weird. It’s not funny. You can’t take this ride … get out of my car please.’
The twins recounted the incident later in the video speaking to college students, saying: ‘We’ve had the police called on us like all day. I called an Uber driver, right, and we both got in the car, and then the people saw us get into the car with like the ski mask and everything on, and then the Uber driver kicked us out of the car.
‘One minute later, there were like 10 cop cars that pulled out like guns on him. They were like rifles. They thought he was the getaway driver, so they had like 15 guns — he’s like, “I’m not even a part of this…” Yeah, poor guy.’
The incident hasn’t effected the twins’ popularity, though, as since they were charged last August, their subscriber count on YouTube has increase from 4.81million subscribers to 6.68million.
The twins also have 29.9million followers on TikTok.
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