YouTube stars Alan and Alex Stokes have been arrested and charged with felony false imprisonment and misdemeanor swatting after staging a fake bank robbery prank for their channel.
The twin social media influencers, 23, were each charged with one felony count of “false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting an emergency,” according to a press release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday, August 5.
Alan and Alex filmed the prank in Irvine, California, in October 2019 and posted it to their Stokes YouTube channel, which boasts almost 5 million subscribers. In the video — which has since been deleted — the brothers wore black clothing and ski masks while carrying duffle bags full of cash to trick people into thinking they had robbed a bank.
“They ordered an Uber and when they got in the vehicle the Uber driver, who was unaware of the prank, refused to drive them,” authorities said in the press statement. “A bystander witnessed this, believing the two men had just robbed a bank and were attempting to carjack the Uber driver.”
Police arrived and “ordered the Uber driver out at gunpoint,” but he was released after authorities “determined he was not involved.”
“Police issued a warning to the Stokes brothers about the dangers of their conduct and let them go,” the statement added.
Hours later, the duo tried to carry out the prank again at the University of California, Irvine, and authorities were alerted to reports of a bank robbery.
“These were not pranks,” Orange County DA 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.”
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If convicted of the charges, the pair could face a maximum sentence of up to four years each in prison.
The Stokes twins aren’t the only YouTubers who recently had a brush with the law. On Wednesday, YouTube star Jake Paul‘s home was raided by the FBI, whose agents seized multiple firearms found on the property. No arrests were made at the time.
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