Influencer who made sick fake syringe videos targeting strangers jailed

Ilan M., who goes by ‘Amine Mojito’ online was sentenced to six months behind bars for the disgusting prank in which he left people thinking they had been injected with an unknown substance

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An influencer who filmed sick fake syringe attacks^[1] on unsuspecting members of the public in order to get famous online has been jailed.

Ilan M., who goes by the online handle ‘Amine Mojito’ was sentenced to six months behind bars for the disgusting prank which he left people thinking they had been injected with an unknown substance. The french man was arrested after the video was shared to TikTok^[2] shortly before the Fête de la Musique (World Music Day) in June sparking widespread outrage.

The 27-year-old was in court^[3] after he pretended to inject people with an empty syringe and filmed their horrified reactions in a clip he titled “Mojito le piqueur fou” (the mad stinger). The pranks caused outrage in France as the country was still reeling from reports of people being attacked with needles at festivals and student parties at the time. During the June music festival police received 145 reports of needle spiking, although few concrete cases were found.

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The court heard how Mojito, intentionally or not, had encouraged the phenomenon through his pranks. Prosecutors called for the influencer to be sentenced to 15 months in prison with electronic monitoring, including five months suspended. He was sentenced on Friday at the Paris Criminal Court to 12 months in prison, six of which were suspended, on the charge of “violence with a weapon that did not result in incapacity for work”, according to French newspaper Libération^[6].

He was also ordered to pay a fine of €1500 (£1,302) and banned from owning or carrying a weapon for three years. He told the court he had been “in his own world^[7] ” and “didn’t know anything”, according to media reports. “I had the very bad idea of doing these pranks by imitating what I saw on the internet, in Spain, in Portugal,” he said. “I didn’t think it could hurt people. That was my mistake, I didn’t think about others, I thought about myself.”

His lawyer, Marie Claret de Fleurieu, told Libération the sentence “brings the debates back into more proportion after the initial media frenzy” and “restores a little balance between the preservation of public order and that of the fundamental rights of my client”.

Lawyers representing Ilan M had asked for “clemency” from the court, citing the fact he had already spent two months in pre-trial detention in solitary confinement for his own safety. But people on social media were outraged at what they said was a too-lenient sentence.

“Six months is not enough,” one wrote.

“The gesture is revolting, even with an empty syringe. The risk of spreading this kind of video is that crazies will imitate it with harmful substances.”

“Even if it was a ‘prank’, I imagine that some of the people who were tricked must have lived in terror at the thought of having been actually stabbed and contaminated by something,” another said.