10 Social Media Stunts That Ended in Arrests or Worse

Competition among social media influencers to gain subscribers is intense because more subscribers equals more advertisers, which, in turn, equals a bigger income. Partly for this reason, those who operate social media platforms sometimes perform ill-advised, reckless, and dangerous stunts. The ten social media stunts on this list led to arrests on various charges and, in some cases, to significant property damage, serious injury, and even death.

Related: Ten Horror Stories from the Depths of Social Media

10 Burglary, Theft of Services, and Trespassing

For Jacob Pursifull, 20, of Prairieville, Louisiana, alligators were an attraction that he simply couldn’t pass up, even though, Tampa police said, he had to jump “over a fence to unlawfully enter the park” in order to get to the reptiles. Once inside, he yelled at a nearby group of people before leaving.

His actions and those of his confederates were caught on surveillance videotape. Pursifull posted the video of his exploit on TikTok, which enabled police to identify him. He was arrested on charges of burglary, theft of services, and trespassing.^[1]

9 Threats of Violence

Music spilled over into a potential fight when a social media duel between three Punjabi singers led them to agree to square off in the Purab Premium Apartments in Chandigarh, India. The incident ended with the arrest of Harkirat Singh Mangat, aka Elly Mangat, as he attempted to gain access to the apartment complex where the other vocalists, the Randhawa brothers—Prince and Rami—lived. Among other things, the brothers had objected to the vulgar lyrics Mangat sometimes sang.

Rami was also arrested on the same charge as Mangat faced: making threats against one another on social media. Prince later turned himself in at the Sohana police station. According to the Times of India, a senior police officer viewed the singers’ actions as a publicity stunt intended “to gain fame,” but the threats they’d made against one another were too serious to ignore.

The three men were processed under sections 294 (“Obscene acts and songs”), 504 (“Intentional insult with intent to provoke [a] breach of the peace”), and 506 (“Punishment for criminal intimidation”) of the Indian Penal Code and section 67 (“Punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form”) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.^[2]

8 Shoplifting

In a report for Kalemba News, Francis Nundwe’s TikTok shoplifting stunt was referred to as a quest for fame. The incident resulted in more infamy than fame, however, after the influencer was arrested on charges of theft. Seeking social media attention and more followers, Nundwe, 23, allegedly filmed himself appropriating merchandise from various stores without paying for the items.

The Matero, Zambia, resident was arrested after eating and drinking in a Shoprite store and announcing that he had no intention of paying for the fare. He also filmed himself replacing his own slippers with a pair displayed at a PEP store, apparently also without paying for them. He admitted that he knew that the stores were equipped with surveillance cameras but described his actions as nothing more than a stunt.^[3]

7 Aiming Guns at a Daycare Center

Bodybuilder and social media influencer Estrella Maria Pereira, 50, admitted that pointing rifles at a daycare center was a poor decision, but she offered a mitigating factor: her ignorance. She and her partner, Miguel A. Ruiz, 57, were unaware of the existence of a daycare there. Their motive: “We thought it would be cool to take a picture with a gun,” even though, she added, that she “would be freaked out if she saw somebody doing the same thing.” Nevertheless, she believed that the incident was getting blown out of proportion.

Apparently, the children’s parents and the Miami-Dade Police disagreed; the former saw the couple’s actions as having been dangerous, frightening, and irresponsible, and the latter arrested Pereira and Ruiz, charging them with aggravated assault with a firearm and exhibiting a firearm near a school property. According to a news report, the first detective who arrived at the scene found “Ruiz holding a loaded rifle in a ‘kneeling firing position’” as he aimed at the school’s door. The school also took the matter seriously, going on lockdown to protect students.^[4]

6 Faking a Kidnapping

If the day seems boring, or there’s a need to thrill social media followers, an influencer can always fake a kidnapping. That, apparently, was the thought that crossed the minds of “Goodnight Chicken” (Chen Neng Chuan), 31, and his partner in crime, Anow (Lu Tsu Hsien), 34, who were arrested for live-streaming what appeared to be a kidnapping in progress. A Radio Free Asia website article reports that, in one of their two YouTube videos, which first appeared on February 12 and 13, 2016, Chen said that he was beaten and imprisoned after breaking into a scam compound.

Not surprisingly, the stunt backfired, leading to the pranksters’ arrest on incitement charges. According to the Sihanoukville provincial court, the Taiwanese influencers entered “Cambodia in an attempt to produce fake videos on human trafficking, detention and torture, rape and human organs selling.” Following the duo’s speedy conviction, the two Taiwanese influencers were sentenced to two years in prison and fined four million riels ($1,000).^[5]

5 Jumping a Tesla over an Intersection

A speeding car gone airborne was nearly invisible except for its taillights shining in the dark. Seconds later, the sound of a crash occurred as onlookers cried out. A USA Today video’s caption explained that the rented Tesla’s driver had jumped over a “steep [intersection] street in Los Angeles, while a crowd of spectators caught the stunt on video.” The Tesla crashed into two parked vehicles before the driver abandoned the car and fled the scene.

From a different angle, footage showed the car’s takeoff and flight, its landing on its front wheels and chassis, a couple of wild bounces, and erratic swerves before an abrupt stop at the bottom of the hill. The left front side of the car showed damage, and the hood was up, having opened during the wild ride. Police, the video states, treated the stunt “as a hit-and-run” incident and were “following up with the person who rented the Tesla.”

A follow-up video identified the driver as a TikToker. The vast majority of the tips the police received concerning the incident identified the driver as Dominykas Zeglaitis, whom the authorities considered “a person of interest.”^[6]

4 Popping a Wheelie

Mushtaq Ansari, a social activist, shared videos on Twitter (now X), showing Pothole Warriors performing dangerous stunts on the streets of Mumbai, India. One such stunt shows two women and a third rider seated on a motorcycle, none of them wearing helmets or other protective gear. One woman sits on the vehicle’s pillion, or rear seat; the other, on its fuel tank, facing the operator, who is sandwiched between his two passengers.

While traveling, the operator performs a wheelie, lifting the front end of the motorcycle so that the bike rears backward as it continues to travel down the street. Traffic police cited Faiyyaz Ahmad Azeemullah Qadri, 24, a resident of Wadala, a neighborhood in Mumbai, with rash and negligent driving, endangering human life or the safety of others, and abetment (i.e., abetting, aiding, or encouraging another to violate the law).^[7]

3 Launching Firecrackers

A Tamul man identified as “Devil Rider” was arrested after popping a wheelie on his motorbike before igniting firecrackers attached to the vehicle. A video shows him secure a semicircular array of the cylindrical explosives to the front of the bike before mounting up and speeding down the street. As the bike gathered speed, he executed the wheelie and commenced firing off a series of explosives while streaking down the pavement, his bike still upended on its rear wheel.

The blasts of the fireworks flashed streaks of yellow and orange flames upward into the night sky and over the rider’s helmet, the fire from the last salvo jetting into his helmet’s face shield and down his shirt. The daredevil was later arrested and accused under “sections 279 [‘Rash driving or riding on a public way’], 286 [‘Negligent conduct with respect to [an] explosive substance’] and 336 [‘Act endangering the life [sic] or personal safety of others] of the Indian Penal Code, among others.”^[8]

2 Putting Buckets over Shoppers’ Heads

The stunt sounded harmless, if ill-advised: placing buckets on the heads of strangers and filming their reactions. The prank turned out to be anything but innocuous for Lana Clay-Monaghan, 30, the mother of twin sons and a cancer survivor. When teenage TikTok fans plunked a bucket over her head while she was shopping at a Tustin, California, Target store, Clay-Monaghan said, “Everything went quiet, dark, and there [seemed to be] no air.” She had epilepsy, and the attack prevented her from obtaining sufficient air, causing her to faint, after which she was hospitalized, according to a News10 ABC channel report. The incident affected her both physically and psychologically, she said.

Tustin Police, who reviewed the footage in an attempt to identify the culprits, believed the teens were participating in the “stranger bucket challenge” trending on TikTok. Far from being a harmless stunt, this challenge, the police department’s Lt. Ryan said, constituted an assault and battery on another person that would be investigated as such.

Clay-Monaghan filed a lawsuit against TikTok, Target, BYTEDANCE, and a number of individuals for negligence and, in some instances, other offenses. The actions of several of the plaintiffs allegedly caused the defendant to lose consciousness, fall, sustain a head injury, and experience a seizure that required her to receive emergency medical treatment for her injuries.

In partial support of the lawsuit’s allegations, the lawsuit points out TikTok’s “engineered addiction”; the lack of the full development of adolescents’ brains “in regions related to risk evaluation, emotional regulation, and impulse control;” TikTok’s algorithms’ exploitation of “minor users’ diminished decision-making capacity, impulse control, and emotional maturity”; and the many dangerous challenges that TikTok has featured. These include encouraging users to pour boiling hot water on someone else, shoot random strangers with tiny water-absorbent polymer beads using gel blaster guns, and exit moving vehicles to dance alongside them in the road.^[9]

1 Filming a Backflip

Compared to some of the other social media pranks that have landed influencers in hot water, filming a backflip doesn’t sound all that extreme, but this stunt proved serious, indeed, when its performer died following the injury he sustained. As KNTV 13 Las Vegas, an ABC affiliate, reports, Keonte Jones, 28, set up a livestream on June 20, 2024, to show Larry Coner, 55, a homeless man, perform a backflip for Jones’s social media audience. Apparently, Jones offered Coner $6 to do the aerial backward somersault.

The stunt’s painful finale occurred when Coner landed on his neck as Jones and onlookers watched, laughing. For ten minutes, Jones continued to laugh and film, asking that no one summon medical personnel. When help did arrive, Coner was taken to University Medical Center, having suffered “a severe spinal injury,” from which he died on June 30. Charged with felony willful disregard for a person’s safety, Jones was arrested.^[10]