Alan Chen Stokes and Alex Chen Stokes are Chinese-American

twins Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...

and

Internet celebrities An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer, social media personality, internet personality, or simply influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social m ...

known for their

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

and

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

accounts with 19.9 million subscribers and 31.1 million followers respectively. They began making videos separately and then combined their following into a shared twins account. As of 2022, their YouTube channel is the 9th largest in the world as measured by views per episode.

Legal issues

In August 2020, the Stokes Twins were charged with false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud or deceit and falsely reporting an emergency in connection, or swatting with a YouTube video that they had recorded in October 2019. The video contained two separate fake

bank robberies Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank- ...

as pranks, where the brothers pretended to be robbers; dressed all in black, wearing ski masks and carrying duffle bags, and are attempting to make a getaway by asking unsuspecting people for clothing items or transportation help. At one instance, they called an

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

driver, who was not aware of the prank, and after the driver refused to drive them they attempted to coerce him. Numerous bystanders called police in both prank attempts and footage of the pair being stopped by officers were added to the video. The Uber driver was held at gunpoint by responding officers until it was determined the driver was not involved, and the brothers were warned but not arrested and continued to film the video with a second prank four hours later at

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

. The twins' attorneys have raised claims that the twins are not guilty of the charges as responding officers from the first prank reportedly gave suggestions for the video being filmed, and one brother reportedly called the Irvine Police Department's non-emergency line twice to tell them about the prank prior to the video being filmed. Their attorneys also raised concerns about the length of time between the video and the charges; ten months, and that the twins were not notified about the charges until after the department issued a press release about them. On April 1, 2021, the twins pleaded guilty in a plea bargain, and were sentenced to 160 hours community service and a year of probation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stokes twins 1996 births American people of Chinese descent American TikTokers American YouTubers Criminals from Florida Criminals from Tennessee Living people Male twins Mass media people from Tennessee People from Hollywood, Florida People from Tennessee Social media influencers