YouTube ‘prankster’ twins plead guilty to staging fake bank robbery

A pair of YouTube stars have pleaded guilty to charges issued after fake bank robbery stunt filmed in California led to an Uber driver being held at gunpoint by police.

Alan and Alex Stokes, the 24-year-old twins who run the Stokes Twins YouTube channel, pleaded guilty on Wednesday after accepting a bargain offered by the judge that included no time in prison.

The pair, who boast more than 6 million subscribers to their mostly prank-based content, were both originally charged with one felony count each of false imprisonment by violence, menace or fraud, and two misdemeanor counts of falsely reporting an emergency.

If they had been convicted on those counts, the Stokes Twins could have each faced five years in prison, the Orange County district attorney’s office confirmed.

However, after pleading guilty to a bargain plea offered by the judge, the felony count was reduced to a misdemeanor on Wednesday, with the pair needing to complete 160 hours of community service instead of spending time in prison.

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The original charges stemmed from two pranks staged by the twins on 15 October 2020 in Irvine, California, where they wore balaclavas, carried duffel bags full of money and pretended to be fleeing from a bank robbery.

In the first incident, the 24-year-old’s called an Uber and ran to it while being filmed by their videographer. The driver would not let them in his vehicle and an onlooker called the police after suspecting it was an attempted carjacking.

When the police arrived, they ordered the Uber driver to get out of the car at gunpoint, before being informed that the incident was instead supposed to be part of a prank.

The authorities let the twins leave with a warning, but officers arrested them later in the day after they once again attempted the prank at a nearby university campus.

Although robbery prank videos are common on YouTube, they can be dangerous, as a 20-year-old man was fatally shot in Nashville in February while filming a similar video to upload to the video-sharing platform.

Prosecutors were pushing for a harsher punishment for the twins, with Orange County district attorney Todd Spitzer explaining that “these crimes could have easily resulted in someone being seriously hurt or killed.”

He added: “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.”

As part of their plea deal on Wednesday, the Stokes Twins were ordered by the judge to stop creating content for their channel that mimics criminal behaviour.