YouTube prankster jailed for London bomb hoax and heist
The co-founder of a UK-based YouTube channel devoted to candid videos showing the public being pranked has been sentenced to 24 weeks in prison.
Danh Van Le of the Trollstation YouTube channel received the charges for tasking a 15 year old boy with opening a fake briefcase bomb in a series of pranks – an ode to Ahmed Mohamed who was famously under suspicion from his school for bringing in a disassembled bomb.
Van Le pled guilty to eight counts of bomb hoaxes. Furthermore, additional offences from another stunt in which he pretended to steal paintings from the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery, adding another 12 weeks to his sentence.
A spokesperson for the channel, which boasts 680,000 subscribers told Digital Trends that the sentence was “pretty unfair”.
“A big production crew for the Jackie Chan movie blew up a bus in London in February and didn’t warn anybody apart from some local people.
“In a way that impacted more people and scared a lot more people, but a small production does this low-budget thing and this is how it is dealt with.”
Van Le has received donations from the public in the aftermath on IndieGoGo. The team showed support for him on the channel, vowing to continue uploading “retarded stuff”.