August 07, 2020
YouTube twins, Alan and Alex Stokes have recently come under fire with the police for staging a bank robbery for their channel.
According to a report by Entertainment Tonight, the twins have been charged for two felony counts, one for “false imprisonment affected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit” while the other is for "falsely reporting an emergency."
The now-deleted video by twins which was titled "BANK ROBBER PRANK! (gone wrong)” included a staged bank robbery which the brothers took on, in an Uber with ski masks and duffle bags.
The report was called in by a bystander who witnessed the brothers carjacking the Uber driver who allegedly refused to drive them to their destination.
People claim the driver was livid over the bizarre request by the YouTubers and claimed, "This is weird. It's not funny. You can't take this ride ... get out of my car please."
Entertainment Tonight reported on the police takedown, claiming armed officers approached the driver, however, after finding out that he was not an accomplice to this act they issued a warning to the brothers instead and reprimanded them for this morbid prank.
An attorney working for the Orange County District office, Todd Spitzer told a leading daily, that believes "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."
Even after a strong warning by the local authorities was issued, the brothers seemed unaffected, and even joked about the incident to People, 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."