If you are too much into YouTube, then you might have come across Alan and Alex Stokes. The two are 23-year old twin brothers who are popular for posting prank videos on their YouTube channel, Stokes Twins.

Pranks can be funny once in a while but at times they can be offensive. Offensive to the point of attracting intervention from the authorities. Well, it seems that one of the duo’s plots might have done exactly that.

Alan and Alex Stokes were each charged with a felony related to a fake bank robbery. They did get to record the whole thing and post it on YouTube last October.

Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox

Enter valid email-id

Subscribe

I prefer it on Telegram

The two brothers disguised themselves as criminals to an Uber driver and other random bystanders. To make it convincing enough, they forced the people they met to give them clothes, rides and other forms of assistance in a way that broke the laws of their resident state.

According to the South California authorities, these actions are not supposed to be viewed as pranks. “These are crimes that could have resulted in someone getting seriously injured or even killed,” one officer said.

“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 two YouTubers have been charged with one felony count of “false “false imprisonment affected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit” and one misdemeanour count of falsely reporting an emergency.

The video, that has since been made private, showed the brothers trying to explain the prank to a police officer. Obviously, none of it amused him as he calls in more than a dozen more officers to the scene.

And even though the two thought it was all done with, the joke has come back to bite them.