YouTube Pranksters Jailed For Faking Kidnapping And Robbery [Video]
YouTube pranksters have been arrested by police after they were found staging a fake art heist at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The stunt, described in court as “warped and immature,” saw one woman lose her consciousness and dozens of other visitors rush to the gallery exit in panic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyW2J572xQ0
The pranksters arrested were trying to make a video for their YouTube channel named Trollstation. Daniel Jarvis, 27, Endrit Ferizolli, 20, Ebenezer Mensah, 29, and 23-year-old Helder Gomes entered the gallery with sticky cloths that blurred their faces. They had somehow managed to smuggle paintings into the BP Portrait Award Exhibition, and some of the group then shouted “Let’s get the paintings” before trying to make people believe that they were actually trying to steal high-value artwork.
The channel is hugely popular on YouTube with more than 700,000 subscribers and has built a reputation of filming staged pranks around the city.
According to BBC News, the group were involved in a fake robbery at London’s National Portrait Gallery and a fake kidnapping at Tate Britain in July 2015.
BBC News also reported that the fifth member of their group was imprisoned back in March following a bomb hoax.
“The hoaxes may have seemed harmless to them, but they caused genuine distress to a number of members of the public, who should be able to go about their daily business without being put in fear in this way. We hope these convictions send a strong message that unlawful activities such as these will not be tolerated in London,” said Robert Short, of the Crown Prosecution Service.
The fifth member arraigned was Danh Van Le. He was sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment in March for his involvement in the fake robbery. He was also sentenced to 24 weeks in jail for a separate bomb hoax.
Mr. Jarvis was sentenced to 20 weeks, Mr. Mensah and Mr. Gomes to 18 weeks each, and Mr. Ferizolli to 16 weeks for the charge at the National Portrait Gallery. They were also sentenced to eight weeks for the fake kidnapping at Tate Britain, which is set to run concurrently.
The group is now evaluating their methods, according to BBC News.
“Our aim was never to get away with breaking the law,” a member of the group known as Light told the BBC at the time. We are a big influence and we try to use that positively,” he said of the channel’s large following.
Although the group claimed that the pranks were done simply to entertain their audience and they had no intention of spreading fear among the public, the court viewed the case differently than they perceived.
YouTube prank channel Trollstation taken down over trademark claimhttps://t.co/XX47T1jBAk pic.twitter.com/eI5GtH0Bqf
— BuzzFeed UK (@BuzzFeedUK) May 4, 2016
“I was told that the defendants believed what they were doing was funny. Their sense of humour is warped. It was quite foreseeable those attending the gallery, not being in on the joke, but being familiar with recent scenes of people running for their lives from terrorist acts, would be terrified and panicked. And that is what happened,” District Judge Mike Snow said.
Judge Snow also said that the men had caused “high levels of fear of violence,” a “risk of death or injury” during the stampede from the National Portrait Gallery, and also were humiliating the prank victims by “recording their terrified reactions” to use as a sensational content on YouTube.
[Image via Shutterstock]
