The Stokes Twins Charged with False Imprisonment and More After YouTube Stunt

The Stokes Twins are facing prison time following bank robbery pranks they pulled last year for their YouTube channel.

The Orange County District Attorney's Office announced Alan and Alex Stokes, 23, have been charged with “one felony count of false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting an emergency in connection with the October 15, 2019 pranks.”

If convicted, they could face four years in prison.

The fake robbery video was viewed more than a million times on their channel, and showed the brothers dressed in all black, wearing ski masks, and carrying duffel bags of money.

According to the D.A., “They ordered an Uber, and when they got in the vehicle the Uber driver, who was unaware of the prank, refused to drive them. A bystander witnessed this, believing the two men had just robbed a bank and were attempting to carjack the Uber driver.Irvine police arrived and ordered the Uber driver out at gunpoint. He was released after police determined he was not involved.”

The cops let them go, but hours later the police received more calls about a second bank robbery stunt, this time on the University of California, Irvine, campus.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement, “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.”