In March 2016, Trollstation founder Danh Van Le was jailed for 24 weeks for this bomb hoax video since removed from YouTube...
...in which a young boy recruited for the “prank” dumps a clock in a suitcase next to strangers at a bus stop before running away.
2 months later, 4 more Trollstation members were sentenced to jail terms between 16 and 20 weeks for the video seen here...
...after the team caused a “terrifying” stampede by faking a robbery and kidnapping in London’s National Gallery.
Trollstation claimed that jail was unfair and compared the pranks to an explosion filmed in public for a Jackie Chan movie.
In December 2014, YouTube prank star Josh Paler Lin was filmed this scene supposedly giving a Los Angeles homeless man $100...
...and secretly recording him heading to a liquor store where he surprisingly emerged with food to give out to others.
The heartwarming story went viral with over 45M views and raised nearly $150,000 in donations for the man, Kenni Thomas Nickel.
Unfortunately, when Nickel was found dead on the street in June 2015 of alcoholism, the video’s veracity came into question.
Nickel’s family claimed the video was faked and that even though he was homeless, Nickel actually had a sizable trust fund.
A lawsuit alleged that Lin first tried to keep $19,801 from the donations as a fee and then never gave Nickel any of the money.
In November 2014, a now deleted video, titled “Drunk Girl in Public,” appeared to show a drunk woman on Hollywood Boulevard...
...approaching 5 different men, who instead of helping her with directions, tried to coax her back to their apartments.
The video, however, turned out to be staged with paid actors for viral marketing and was posted to YouTube by Stephen Zhang.
The outraged male actors allege they were tricked and told to “just go with it” and that they were going to be famous.
Actress Jennifer Box also claimed that she was tricked into the “prank” and spoke out against fake “social experiments.”
In September 2014, YouTube star Sam Pepper posted this controversial prank video in which he grabbed women on the street...
...eliciting a negative backlash from the YouTube community and leading to several more serious allegations of sexual assault.
But charges were never filed and Pepper continued with prank videos, culminating in this fake kidnapping and murder of a friend.
The stunt was strongly condemned, and Pepper briefly withdrew offline after starting a failed $1.5M GoFundMe to delete his account.
Pepper returned to YouTube in early 2016 with a confession that his and most other prank videos on YouTube were fake.
In January 2016, Keemstar posted a since removed DramaAlert video identifying an elderly Twitch streamer as a sex offender...
...mistakenly confusing the 62-year-old Runescape fan for an actual criminal who is still in jail.
The streamer revived death threats and was in tears live on Twitch as he tried to prove his innocence.
Keemstar claimed that the man looked like John Philips, who married a 13-year-old in Runescape before assaulting her in real life.
An apology video followed, but the incident set off protests of Keemstar and other alleged false accusations from his channels.