YouTube Made Me Famous

The world’s most popular video web site, YouTube has given rise to a breed of celebrities in its time. These range from the adolescent antics of lonelygirl15, the understanding answers from Ask a Ninja, and the hilarious foreign language subtitles of Buffalax.

Unwittingly, YouTube has become a fertile ground for criminals, gang members, wannabe terrorists and small time hoaxers grabbing their fifteen minutes of fame. These smart people have taken it into their head to show off their (sometimes imagined) criminal exploits on YouTube, and the result was a bout of YouTube related arrests.

Anton Dunn, under the moniker of The Trashman, posted videos of himself in a black mask claiming to have poisoned several batches of Gerber baby food with cyanide or rat poison. Concerned parents understandably called up the company about the videos. If one video was not enough trouble, he posted another video claiming to lead a bunch of assistants who poisoned many more batches of the food, and that four babies had already died because of his efforts. The wanna be baby killer was exposed as a hoax, the authorities closed in on him and now he faces 10 years in prison with no access to free video hosting sites.

A bunch of gang member kids styling themselves as BV Boys posted a video of themselves marking out their turf in the area. On record were gang-signs and concealed weapons. The authorities homed in, confiscated the weapons, arrested the boys, and now their turf is clean.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed took it into his head to spread a little anarchy with a video tutorial on how to change a remote controlled toy car into a detonator. His intentions were far more sinister, an effort by the international terrorists networks to permeate the web and sow seeds of dissent. The twelve minutes of terrorist propaganda uploaded to the internet cost this young Egyptian student 15 years behind bars in a US prison