YouTube star brothers plead guilty after faking US bank robbery

Two american YouTube stars responsible for a joke of “Bank robbery” who caused an unsuspecting Uber driver to be held at gunpoint by police, pleaded guilty Wednesday to misdemeanor charges.

In October 2019, the Californian twin brothers Alan and Alex Stokes asked for a Uber while they were dressed in black with ski masks and duffel bags apparently full of bills. They were being secretly filmed by his followers.

The driver, who was not aware of the joke, refused to pick them up, but was briefly detained by police at gunpoint after a person witnessed the incident and called emergency services.

“These crimes could easily have caused someone to be seriously injured or killed.” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.

The brothers, now 23, pleaded guilty after the court agreed to lower the charge of illegal detention from a felony – which could have led to maximum sentences of five years in jail for each- to a misdemeanor.

Each of them was sentenced to 160 hours of community service, a year of probation and to pay compensation.

Just hours after the incident of the Uber in Irvine, in South Los Angeles, the brothers performed a similar prank on the University of California campus, which they have now been ordered to avoid.

The twins have more than six million subscribers on YouTube and almost 30 million followers in TikTok.