Twin YouTube stars face charges in bank robbery ‘prank,’ California officials say

Dressed in black, wearing ski masks and carrying duffle bags full of cash, the two men hailed an Uber driver for a ride in Irvine, California, around 2:30 p.m. one Tuesday.

But the driver, suspecting they’d just committed a robbery, refused to take them anywhere, according to a release from the Orange County District Attorney.

A bystander notified police, who ordered the Uber driver out of the vehicle at gunpoint. But the driver and police didn’t know the October 2019 incident was just a YouTube prank, the release says.

Police let twins Alan and Alex Stokes, 23, off with a warning, according to the release.

Then they pulled the same stunt a few hours later at the University of California, Irvine, prompting more 911 calls, the district attorney’s office says.

Now the twins, stars on YouTube and TikTok for their prank videos, face charges including false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit and falsely reporting an emergency, the release says.

“These were not pranks,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in the release. “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,” Spitzer said. “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.”

A video of the bank robbery pranks was changed from public to private Wednesday on the Stokes Twins channel on YouTube, KTLA reported. The channel has 4.8 million followers.

The video, aired by the station, shows the twins dressed in black and wearing ski masks as they dash past startled bystanders, stumbling and dropping bundles of cash.

The now-private video also showed the Uber incident, in which the twins jump into his vehicle and tell him their getaway driver “just bailed on us,” People reported.

“This is weird. It’s not funny,” the Uber driver says, People reported. “You can’t take this ride ... get out of my car please.”

It’s not known if the twins have legal representation, KNBC reported.

They could face up to four years in prison if convicted, the district attorney’s office said.