A young man who pranked people on the streets of Paris, France, by pretending to inject them with syringes has been sentenced to six months in prison, the country’s media reported..
Amine Mojito, whose real name is Ilan M., became a viral sensation after he started posting social media clips wherein he spoofed injecting bystanders with an empty syringe around Paris, during a time when genuine fear of such attacks was at an all-time high.
After being accused of ‘violence with a weapon not resulting in work incapacity,’ he defended himself by claiming that he never intended to hurt people, and that he only copied the prank from other countries in order to promote himself on the social media.
However, prosecutors showed that some of his victims were so traumatised by the prank that they had to be hospitalised for mental health assessments.
‘I had had the very bad idea of performing these tricks by mimicking what I had seen on the internet, in Spain and in Portugal,’ Ilan M. told the court.
‘I didn’t think it could hurt people. That was my mistake, I didn’t think of others, I thought of myself,’ he added.
Prosecutors confirmed that no actual injection took place during the pranks, as the 27-year-old man had kept the syringe cap on, but they also alleged that Ilan’s pranks, whether intentional or unintentional, were intended to encourage attacks on strangers.
The prosecutors added that he had also traumatised many of the victims, one of whom described the experience of believing they had been infected with a virus as ‘a nightmare’.
Despite Mojito’s lawyer asking the court for clemency towards her client, the judge viewed the influencer’s actions as having contributed to a climate of fear, even though few of his pranks were actually reported to the police.
As a result, he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, of which six months shall be served in custody, and the rest suspended.