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YouTuber Twins Alan and Alex Stokes Have Been Charged with Felonies After Faking a Bank Robbery

Photo credit: Matt Winkelmeyer - Getty Images
Photo credit: Matt Winkelmeyer - Getty Images

From Seventeen

  • YouTuber twins Alan and Alex Stokes are facing charges after staging a bank robbery that resulted in an innocent Uber driver being held at gunpoint by the police.

  • The Stokes brothers face four years in prison if convicted.


YouTube stars Alan and Alex Stokes are facing charges as a result of staging a fake bank robbery in 2019 for their channel. According to Entertainment Tonight, the twin brothers have each been charged with a felony count of "false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit" and a misdemeanor charge of "falsely reporting an emergency."

The charges relate to a since-deleted video Alan and Alex posted in October of last year called "BANK ROBBER PRANK! (gone wrong)," wherein they ordered an Uber and pretended to be bank robbers while wearing ski masks and carrying around cash-filled duffel bags.

A passerby ended up calling the police thinking the brothers were trying to carjack the Uber driver, who had refused to drive them and—according to People—said "This is weird. It's not funny. You can't take this ride ... get out of my car please." Per ET, police approached the Uber driver with guns drawn, realized he wasn't involved, and ended up issuing a warning to Alan and Alex. Annnnd then the brothers tried a similar prank four hours later on UC Irvine's campus.

"These were not pranks,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a press statement, via Entertainment Tonight. "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."

In the video (per People), the brothers joked about the incident, 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 Stokes brothers each face four years in state prison if convicted.

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