Twin YouTube Stars Alan And Alex Stokes Charged With Felony For Bank Robbery Prank

Twin YouTube stars Alan and Alex Stokes were charged Wednesday, Aug. 5, with false imprisonment and other crimes in connection to a bank robbery prank last year that led to an Uber driver being held at gunpoint, authorities said.

The brothers are residents of Irvine, California, and have nearly 5 million subscribers on their YouTube page where they post prank videos. The twins have more than 25 million followers on TikTok under their @stokestwins handle.

Orange County prosecutors charged the 23-year-old brothers with one felony count each of false imprisonment involving violence, menace, fraud or deceit, and one misdemeanor count each of falsely reporting an emergency for their connection to the October 2019 prank.

In the prank video that led to the charges, the twins, pretending as bank robbers wearing black ski masks and clothing and carrying duffel bags full of cash, approach random people asking for the nearest bank to make a "large withdrawal."

They then get into an Uber. The Uber driver, unaware of the prank, notices the duo dressed as robbers and refuses to drive them. A bystander who had witnessed the encounter called the police thinking that two people robbed a bank and were trying to carjack the driver, prosecutors said.

The Irwin police arrived at the scene and at gunpoint ordered the driver to get out of the car. He was later released after authorities were convinced that he wasn’t involved in the incident.

The brothers were released with a warning. "I want you guys to be creative and do what you want to do, but you've got to be smarter than this," an officer is heard in the video. "What do you think people are going to do?"

However, four hours later, the twins allegedly performed the same prank on the campus of the University of California. Police were alerted again regarding a bank robbery, prosecutors said.

"These were not pranks, these are crimes that could have resulted in someone getting seriously injured or even killed," Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in a news release. "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."

The brothers have not been arraigned yet. If convicted, the twins could face a maximum sentence of four years in prison.