Two videographers running the YouTube channel Vilbrequin were fined 3000 euros each on Monday evening by the court of Charleville-Mézières for having used rifles and pistols during the filming of one of their videos. The prosecutor's office had asked for a six-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 500 euros, stressing that "this kind of video and YouTubers are of particular interest to young people and teenagers in construction", demanding from them "an example towards their audience".
This decision comes ten days after the announcement of the end of Vilebrequin, the first automotive channel on Youtube in France with nearly 2.5 million subscribers, by the duo who explained that they wanted to breathe after seven years of weekly production. Pierre Chabrier, 29, and Sylvain Lévy, 30, were prosecuted for illegal carrying of weapons, along with a 25-year-old customs officer who had supplied them with the weapons.
"Blowing up a car by firing at the tank: is it possible?"
The latter, the only one present in the courtroom on Monday, was sentenced to a fine of 2000 euros, and to the confiscation of the weapons concerned. The facts date back to October 15, 2022 during the filming of a twenty-minute video entitled "Blasting a car by shooting at the tank: is it possible?". It shows the two videographers, renowned for their offbeat car tests, firing live ammunition at two cars destined for scrapping, in the middle of the countryside, on private land located in Belleville-et-Chatillon-sur-Bar (Ardennes).
Ten firearms, four pistols and six shotguns, were used. The three men had already shot a first video two years earlier, in which an armoured car was targeted, but it took place in a shooting range. The prosecutor's office stressed that the YouTubers' accomplice "had no legitimacy to organize this shooting session and to lend his weapons."
"My clients had the feeling that everything was lined up"
By relying on him, "my clients had the feeling that everything was bordered," argued the lawyer for the Vilbrequin YouTubers, Arnaud Pelpel. During the filming of the video, "the gendarmes came, took selfies with them," he said. As for setting an example, in the video, the duo repeats about fifteen times: "Don't do it again," he said, pleading for acquittal.
Their co-accused's lawyer, David Meunier, also asked for his acquittal. "It's the meeting between two worlds that he likes, the world of weapons and the world of YouTubers, of glitter, that generates this situation," he said. His client, who was a firefighter, then a gendarme before becoming a customs officer, "did not deliberately cross a prohibition".