The Trollstation cameraman has been jailed (Picture: SWNS)

A YouTube prankster has been jailed after he was convicted of terrifying people with bomb hoaxes and mock robberies.

Camerman Danh Van Le, 31, was filming a 15-year-old who was approaching strangers and revealing a clock inside a briefcase.

The footage for YouTube channel Trollstation – which has 680,000 subscribers and 188 million views – shows him frightening two people by dumping the bag and running off.

Unsurprisingly, the prank backfired when Van Le was arrested on suspicion of placing a bomb hoax on eight occasions in central London with his teenage friend.


He was jailed for nine months after he also admitted a public order offence with two earlier hoaxes at the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery.



MORE: How Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn responded to George Osborne’s Budget

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

He admitted staging a bomb hoax at the National Portrait Gallery (Picture: SWNS) The gallery pranks – which it is understood he filmed – saw fake raiders with tights over their faces run into the galleries with paintings in a mock heist.

The clock stunt was filmed in September as an homage to Ahmed Mohamed, 14, who was arrested after his home-made clock was mistaken for a bomb by his American school.

Van Le admitted one count of bomb hoax placing with intent, involving eight incidents, and was sentenced to 24 weeks at Inner London Crown Court.

The now 16-year-old – who cannot be named as a juvenile – admitted the same charge and was given a 12-month intense referral order on February 12.

Van Le also admitted using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause fear or violence on July 5 involving two incidents at the Tate and National Portrait Gallery.

He was sentenced to a further 12 weeks for those offences.

MORE: Foodbank appeals for free tampons as poor women forced to use socks and newspaper

Danh Van Le was sentenced to 24 weeks at Inner London Crown Court (Picture: SWNS) A spokesman for Trollstation – which claims to be the biggest online prankster YouTube channel in the UK – said the sentences were ‘pretty unfair’.

He said: ‘A big production crew for the Jackie Chan movie [The Foreigner] 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 – known as ‘DigiDan’ – is one of the founding members of the Trollstation team, who started posting their controversial videos on YouTube in November 2013.

They film so-called social experiments like this one of a woman being slut-shamed in public.

The team, based in Camberwell, London, were filmed as part of BBC’s Inside Out show, which was aired last month.

The cameraman was convicted of terrifying people with bomb hoaxes and mock robberies (Picture: SWNS)

MORE: Budget 2016: How the budget will impact people with disabilities