Influencer jailed after posting disturbing syringe prank pretending to inject strangers

A French influencer has been jailed for six months after posting a sick prank video where he pretended to inject strangers with fake syringes on TikTok.

Ilan M, who goes by Amine Mojito online, was arrested after sharing the prank videos on TikTok before the Fête de la Musique in June, a popular music festival that takes place all over France.

In the video, the 27-year-old walked up to people in the street and pretended to prick them with a fake syringe. He captioned the clip “Mojito le piqueur fou” (the mad stinger) with a laughing emoji. It went viral online and sparked panic.

Credit: Amine Mojito/TikTok

The Paris Criminal Court sentenced Ilan to 12 months in prison on Friday, 3rd October, convicting him of “violence with a weapon that did not result in incapacity for work,” French newspaper Libération reports. Six months of the sentence was suspended.

“I had the very bad idea of doing these pranks by imitating what I saw on the internet, in Spain, in Portugal,” he told the court. “I didn’t think it could hurt people. That was my mistake, I didn’t think about others, I thought about myself.”

The influencer was also fined £1300 and banned from owning or carrying weapons for three years. He has been held in jail since his arrest while awaiting trial.

Credit: Amine Mojito/Instagram

His lawyer, Marie Claret de Fleurieu, told Libération the court’s decision “brings the debate back to more reasonable proportions after the initial media frenzy” and “restores a bit of balance between public order and [her] client’s fundamental rights”.

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The prosecutor had asked for a harsher sentence of 15 months under electronic monitoring due to the panic his videos caused at music festivals and events across France.

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Featured image by: @amine_mojitonew/Instagram