That Viral Prison Break Video Is a Hoax

On February 20, 2025, just before 6 p.m. Eastern time, a man named William Banks posted a video on X and Instagram that showed him breaking out of jail. It’s gone mega-viral and has been viewed more than 10 million times on X alone. “The one thing keeping me going is that the William Banks jailbreak is actually real,” one poster said on X above a news article detailing Banks’ arrest in February.

The jailbreak is fake.

escape pic.twitter.com/5zMIRbm9fg

— William Banks (@williambanks_) February 20, 2025

Banks is a comedian and all around online weirdo. Over the past few months, he’s been building the narrative around the jailbreak in a series of videos supposedly shot from inside a Connecticut-area prison where he’s doing time.

The online version of events is that police arrested Banks in February of 2024 for stealing pro-Israeli yard signs and charged him with larceny six. According to Banks, Connecticut sent him to jail for the offense. “I have terrible news,” Banks said in a post in October of 2024. “The state of Connecticut has sentenced me to 8 months in jail beginning on Nov 15. I have always tried to make the most out of my life, but today I am presented with an overwhelming challenge to overcome.”

I called the police in Westport, Connecticut and spoke with Administrative Lieutenant Eric Woods about Banks. “There was no jailbreak,” Woods said.

The larceny six charge is real. Banks did, in fact, steal several pro-Israel yard signs from neighborhoods in the Westport, Connecticut area and was charged with larceny six. It’s a misdemeanor that can carry a one-year prison sentence. His mugshot was taken and he was placed in a holding cell before he bonded out for $500.

Woods told me that the likelihood anyone would go to a real jail over this in the Nutmeg State was unlikely. “It’s a misdemeanor. It’s Connecticut. No one is going to jail for larceny six,” Woods said.

Woods called Banks a “self-professed comic.” And that’s true, Banks has spent the last few years of his life posting bizarre Andy Kaufman-esque videos online that blur the line between performance art and comedy. Another pinned video on his Instagram shows him doing standup comedy at West Point while pretending to be a U.S. Marine. Banks often interviews atheists and believers while wearing a medallion that combines the Crucifix, Crescent and Star, and the Star of David. Banks is like a failed art-school dropout version of Conner O’Malley.

Bank’s latest project is pretending to be incarcerated. Over the past few months, he’s posted several videos supposedly shot inside of the prison where he’s doing time for stealing pro-Israeli yard signs. In the narrative he’s built, he’s reading from the Quran and teaching the prisoners how to love god in all its vicissitudes.

The narrative culminated in the jailbreak yesterday which, again, is not real.